Murder trial closes for two men charged in the death of Philadelphia Police Officer Richard Mendez

As the murder trial for two men charged in the shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Richard Mendez drew to a close Tuesday, prosecutors and defense attorneys offered differing interpretations of what happened on that violent October 2023 evening.

Assistant District Attorney Cydney Pope said a group of men — including 20-year-old Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez and 23-year-old Hendrick Pena-Fernandez — went out that night with the goal of stealing cars, a business she said they carried out like a “well-oiled machine.” That, she said, included Martinez-Fernandez’s role of enforcer as he carried a 9mm handgun to protect the operation.

Mendez, 50, and his partner, Raul Ortiz, were shot after they interrupted the group’s attempt to steal a Dodge Charger in parking lot D at Philadelphia International Airport.

Prosecutors said Martinez-Fernandez was under the steering wheel programming a new key fob when he fired his gun, shooting Mendez multiple times through the torso and hitting Raul once in the arm. He also unintentionally shot an 18-year-old man who was one of the group’s accomplices, they said.

Martinez-Fernandez was charged with first-degree murder, robbery, and related crimes. Pena-Fernandez, who prosecutors say assisted in the crime, faces charges of second-degree murder and related crimes.

With both men facing life in prison without parole if convicted, defense attorneys Robert Gamburg and Earl G. Kauffman urged jurors to conclude that prosecutors had failed to make the case for their guilt.

For one, they said jurors should question whether prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence to prove that the men had even been at the crime scene that evening.

And they cast doubt on the account of the prosecution’s star witness — a man who was involved in the crime, and took the stand to implicate the two men after pleading guilty to lesser charges. Alexander Batista-Polanco, who the lawyers said stands to gain a lighter sentence in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors, could not be trusted, they said.

Pope scoffed at the suggestion Batista-Polanco had lied in exchange for favorable treatment and reminded jurors that witnesses face the risk of violence to themselves, and to their families, when speaking out. She said she believed Batista-Polanco would likely be “looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.”

Pope pointed to evidence including cell phone data and recovered DNA linking the men to the crime, which stretched from the South Philadelphia sports complex to the Cranbury, N.J., warehouse where she said the men torched the vehicle they used to flee the scene.

Gamburg, who represents Pena-Fernandez, suggested that prosecutors had erred in charging him with second-degree murder, a killing during the commission of a felony like robbery, arson, or rape. In this case, he suggested, stealing a car was more like theft, and no weapon was used to obtain the vehicle.

Pope, citing the shooting that followed and left a 22-year veteran of the force dead, disagreed.

“You can call it whatever you want,” she said, “but what this is, is robbery.”