A Long Island man arrested after a fatal drunken wreck Jan. 12 bragged to cops, “The laws changed, I’ll be out tomorrow,” thanks to new bail reform measures, prosecutors said Thursday.
Jordan Randolph, 40, who did walk free the next day, also told cops the deadly crash was “just a DWI.”
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Details of the boozy bust were revealed Thursday as Randolph was hit with a 24-count indictment for vehicular manslaughter, aggravated vehicular homicide and a slew of other charges in the crash that killed 27-year-old Jonathan Flores-Maldonado.
“As Jonathan Flores was left taking his last breaths and dying, this defendant was hurling expletives at both officers and EMTs who were trying to render him aid,” Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Jacob DeLauter said during Randolph’s arraignment.
“At one point, the defendant completely trivialized this deadly collision by stating to police, ‘F–k you, January 1st the laws changed. I’ll be out tomorrow and I will come find you,’” DeLauter said. “He also stated to an EMT that when he gets out, he’ll come find her.”
DeLauter said Randolph, who has three prior DWI convictions, was driving at “more than 135 miles per hour” prior to the deadly crash, and that it took several officers to subdue the hulking suspect.
Randolph had been free without bail for weeks before the Jan. 12 crash — despite an earlier arrest in Suffolk on Jan. 1 and a parole violation in Nassau County on which he was supposed to plead guilty months earlier.
And yet he walked free again after the fatal wreck.
That’s because the new law prohibits judges from setting bail on most misdemeanors and many nonviolent felonies — including drunken driving.
“My son became a body count,” Flores-Maldonado’s mother, Lillian Flores, railed outside the Suffolk courtroom Thursday after Randolph pleaded not guilty to the indictment.
“I’m here to advocate for my son and for any other victims that are subject to the injustices of these new laws,” she said. “My name is Lillian Flores. My son is Jonathan Flores-Maldonado, and he was the one that was mowed down on the damned highway.”
Under the new bail laws, Randolph could not be held after the crash because Suffolk prosecutors only charged him with drunken driving and not with Flores-Maldonado’s death.
Extensive media coverage of the case prompted Nassau County Judge William O’Brien, who was presiding over the parole violation in that county, to order Randolph arrested and jailed.
On Thursday, Suffolk County Judge Fernando Camacho ordered him held without bail on the indictment.
*story by New York Post