Car crash leads to charges in stabbing death
Delran police thought they were responding to a car accident Thursday night; someone had called 911 about a crash on Route 130 North just before midnight.
Delran police thought they were responding to a car accident Thursday night; someone had called 911 about a crash on Route 130 North just before midnight.
When they arrived, they found a Chevrolet Cruze, stopped after it had hit the center median, near where 130 intersects Chester Avenue.
On the ground outside the driver's side, Cynthia Fortune, 54, lay bleeding from a stab wound in her neck.
At a nearby diner, according to the Burlington County prosecutor, her husband, Quentin S. Fortune, 37, bloody and in his underwear, was asking for a glass of water.
"By then, the Delran police are hot on his trail," the prosecutor, Robert D. Bernardi, said Friday, after his office announced Quentin Fortune's arrest on homicide charges. "And they literally come in behind him within a minute and take him into custody.
"And he's in the diner in his T-shirt - boxer briefs and T-shirt - and he's got blood on him there."
Fortune, of Somerdale, was charged Friday with murder and weapons offenses.
His wife was pronounced dead at Lourdes Medical Center in Camden. The county medical examiner conducted an autopsy Friday and declared the cause of death to be two stab wounds to her neck.
Bernardi said the murder weapon was believed to have been a folding knife police found inside the bloody car.
He said he did not know when Cynthia Fortune was stabbed. Surveillance video from a nearby business shows their car traveling north in the middle lane when it bounced off cars to the left and right, brushing them before veering into the center median.
Cynthia Fortune was alive at the time, Bernardi said, but he said he believed she had already been stabbed in the car, based on blood in the car and the knife being found there.
"If she wasn't stabbed inside the car, how did the blood get in there?" he said Friday.
On the video, Quentin Fortune gets out of the passenger side and walks around the back as Cynthia Fortune gets out of the driver's side, Bernardi said.
A car pulls up behind the Fortunes and stops with the flashers on. Quentin Fortune has some interaction with the driver.
The car is too far away for its license plate to be legible on the video, but it looks like a late model silver car, possibly a Saturn, Bernardi said. A car matching that description is seen on a different video pulling into the parking lot of a Wawa slightly up the road.
Store management there told investigators a woman, possibly two women, came into the Wawa and went into the bathroom to wash blood off their hands. Investigators have been unable to track them down, he said, but hope they will come forward.
Back at the scene, Bernardi said, video shows Fortune jumping over the median and crossing the southbound lanes, walking to a McDonald's.
He approaches two men waiting in a car in the drive-through line, Bernardi said, but the men take off. Behind the McDonald's, Fortune takes off his bloody clothing, Bernardi said.
From there, Fortune walks into the Route 130 Diner, bloody and in his underwear, Bernardi said. Police took him into custody without resistance, Bernardi said.
Fortune was in Burlington County jail Friday, held on $300,000 full cash bail set by Superior Court Judge Christopher J. Garrenger. Fortune's first court appearance is likely to take place Monday afternoon, Bernardi said.
Records show Fortune served seven years in prison for aggravated assault and was released early last year.
Bernardi asked any additional witnesses - including the woman or women who went into the Wawa - to call investigators at 609-265-7113 or 856-461-9010.
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