anybody not ready all right so I'm going to run through this uh really from the top I went through it earlier at the press conference we had earlier this morning but I'll just run through everything that we know happened uh again and fill in some of the things we've learned since uh the press conference early this morning so Deputy Michael Hartwick is a 19-year veteran the Pinellas County Sheriff's office assigned to our North District station as a patrol Deputy uh 51 years old was assigned to work a traffic detail on I-275 and it's to provide site Safety and Security for the construction that's ongoing on I-275 he arrived out there last night at his assigned spot it about uh 10 40 or so last night 10 40 10 41 he arrived we know from video of the dash camera and Deputy hartwick's car that within about a minute or so after arriving he got out of the car walked in front and walked over to the shoulder of the road so he's southbound just north of the Roosevelt Boulevard exit and gets out of his car and is over on the shoulder of the road he was blocking the two lanes there's four lanes out there he was blocking the two lanes that were closest to the shoulder of the road with his Cruiser there were two other deputies out there one 1500 feet in front of Deputy Hartwick and another one 15 for 1500 feet in front of him Deputy Harwick gets out of the car and what we can see on the video is is that one of the construction trucks passes southbound in a short period of time after that there was a front loader and a big construction front loader so these are these big huge construction vehicles with a big forklift type arms that are in front and they're used to lift these probably thousand pound plus concrete barriers off of flatbed trucks to create the lanes out there as they move things around for construction so this front loader is traveling Northbound probably at about 20 miles an hour we see the front loader pass by the front of Deputy harwick's car and there was a white pickup truck that was behind it that was escorted it what you see is you see the white pickup truck abruptly break and stop now he wasn't supposed to stop because he's supposed to be escorting the front loader but he stopped because he saw as the front loader continued Northbound as the front loader had hit and struck and killed Deputy Hartwick so the operator of the front loader kept going he got on a phone call called another construction worker who was crying on the phone not making sense he got a short distance to the north pulled off on the front loader and there was another construction worker there he told that other construction worker that he had just killed the deputy and took off his hat and took off his vest his traffic vest handed it to him told him to hide it and get rid of it and he fled Northbound on foot so when we got out there last night and piece all this together and we began looking for uh the suspect in this and this resulted in and I would call it really a nine hour Manhunt that was here in Pinellas County over in Tampa and involved virtually every single one of our canines three helicopters and hundreds of Law Enforcement Officers trying to find this guy we received as a result and thank you all for it thank the public for it we received a lot of information from the press conference this morning where we received tips we're following up on those and even though our canine dogs had been out there and had been searching the area extensively and helicopter had been up is that we asked for help from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office because they have Bloodhounds normal canine scent is only going to last probably about 45 minutes to an hour for tracking purposes but with a bloodhound is is that you give them a Cent and then they seek out that Cent and because he had taken off his vest in his helmet one of our canines had found those the other guy had dumped them in the woods so we were able to have those the Bloodhound came out and the Bloodhound was able to get that set and then track to where this person was so that's what happened he was taken into custody and so now we fill in some names and a little bit more about this what I told you all this morning uh was the person that we're looking for and identify to him is um uh Victor Vasquez and I just told you that he was I believe I told you he was about 35 years old and that he was from Puerto Rico well as it turns out that's all a bunch of nonsense and that his real name is Juan Ariel a-r-i-e-l Molina m-o-l-i-n-a hyphen salus s-a-l-l-e-s his date of birth is May 6 1990. so as we find out that this guy entered the country illegally on October 25th of 2021 in Eagle Pass Texas he was turned around by the border patrol and sent back to Mexico there is no record of him ever legally coming back into the United States and he is here illegally uh he admitted to us that he has been here in the U.S he came back in through the Texas border he is here illegally and he's been here in the Tampa Bay Area since about March of this year the guy that um he gave his hard hat and his vest to he originally tells us that his name is Glidden Soto and he gave a date of birth of June 27 1986. well it turns out that that's all a bunch of nonsense too and that his real name is eliesser e-l-i-e-s-e-r -a-u-r-e-l-i-o last name is Gomez hyphen zelaya z-e-l-a-y-a and his real date of birth is 5 8 of 91 and he too is here illegally and he's from Honduras so this guy eliaser we've charged him with a felony of accessory after the fact we've charged uh Molina Salas with leaving the scene of an accident involving death it's the first degree found with a four-year minimum mandatory in State Prison so what we find also is that there are a lot of construction workers out there last night a lot of people out there uh the majority of them were lying to us the majority of a majority of them were giving us false names they were entering the investigation not giving us answers to the questions that we needed and importantly they're all giving us fake names like these guys were giving us fake names all of these people are working for Archer Western which is a contractor apparently doing work for the Florida Department of Transportation out of Tampa and there's companies employing all these illegals and they're all out there lying giving us fake names fake IDs a lot of fake IDs out of North Carolina and they're really frustrated this investigation and this guy that we have in custody again he is here illegally and he fled uh as he said because he became afraid after he killed the deputy but he clearly knew he killed the deputy because when he was hunkered down out there last night he had a cell phone on we had some ways of tracking what he was doing with a cell phone and he was calling people over in Tampa and he actually called his roommate who's another guy that's here illegally he came over and tried to pick him up and he actually saw all the law enforcement activity called him back and said I'm not getting involved in this and he turned around and went back to Tampa so we were interviewing people in Tampa chasing this thing around all day but the essence of it is uh what I told you the deputy Harcourt gets gets hit uh Molina Salas flees hides from law enforcement and he got a bunch of illegals working for this State Contractor out there who shouldn't be here and they shouldn't be working and they shouldn't be out there doing this and this guy was going I think too fast for for this thing and again he knew he hit a deputy and as opposed to stopping rendering Aid accepting responsibility for what he did is is that we had to chase him around and site and and sift through all this nonsense with all these people alive and providing fake IDs and we spent we said about nine hours out there chasing this thing down but very thankfully all the members of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies in Pinellas County that participated in this I was over in Tampa for a while this morning with the Tampa Police Department and thank Chief O'Connor and chief Holloway from St Pete and all the other agencies that helped us about we got this guy he is in custody he'll be booked into the county jail leader today we put something out on this earlier but at 3 30 this afternoon Deputy Hartwick will be moving from the medical examiner's office next door to the adobe's funeral home in Tarpon Springs and there'll be a procession that goes here on Ulmerton Road to the east north on 19 to Tarpon Avenue so anybody that wants to pay their respects to Deputy Hartwick is he is escorted from the medical examiner's office to the funeral home I think it would be much appreciated by all members of law enforcement Mike Hart Mike Hartwick was a cop out there doing his job he dedicated his 19 years of service to protecting the people in Pinellas County and he he shouldn't have died this way questions very sorry will there be any sanctions against Construction Company well local law enforcement has no jurisdiction to enforce immigration law um you could take five people and bring them in the back door right now and they can sit here and tell all of us and tell me in front of all of you that they're here illegally and there's nothing I can do about it local law enforcement has no authority to enforce immigration law has no jurisdiction I can't put them in jail I can't do anything with them at all the most I can do is what you can do is pick up a phone and call ice and say you got a guy that's here illegally and that's most I can do about it so as far as you know this company and hiring illegals will certainly make you know ice aware of it and it's up to them to act and do something about it I'm sure that the the state is aware of this uh you know I made a phone call to let people know what happened with this contractor and you know what the state does with it I don't have any control over that but this is wrong change anything in the charging process that these two men are not so so we already received a detainer on him from federal immigration and all that means is is that at some point in time if he's ever released we would not release him because they put a detainer on him and then they would come pick him up now what happens from there I can't tell you um and you know I don't know so he's going to sit on these charges um and you know we'll see he's still here in the building now he's not been booked into the jail yet we'll see what kind of body gets and see what a judge does as far as a bond is concerned but if he were to bond try and bond on the state charges the immigration detainer would kick in if he doesn't Bond he'll sit it'll go through the process in State Court should be assuming he's convicted like I said it's a first degree felony the maximum uh statutory penalty is 30 years in state prison but it carries a four-year minimum mandatory so after that period of time that detainer goes with him to the state prison system and then ice would pick him up when he gets released from the state prison system but it doesn't shows here that this doesn't work is that he he's already deported once and came back just like so many of these people do so angry he doesn't have a driver's license you know he's got nothing he shouldn't been here to begin with and he certainly shouldn't have been driving and he shouldn't have been working you know he's got you know which makes you wonder again with all of this and he has no qualifications to drive a front loader and you know what he said is that what he told those people is is that back in Honduras he works some construction and he knows how to operate this thing so they said go ahead I mean is that really what these contractors are doing is that how is that how they're doing business and they're just taking all these people who don't have a driver's license and in fact what he gave the employer fake ID that he gave him wasn't even a driver's license it's a fake ID card supposedly from the state of North Carolina but it's all bogus and then they accept that and they let this guy get behind the wheel well really correct just like they all do they come up through the Border you know they come up through that pipeline through Central America and he's from Honduras and just about all these people are from Honduras and they came up through the Mexican border and then they came here to Florida it's in Tampa is the address I don't have the address in front of me it's Archer Western in Tampa yeah you know like you said you know Mike is one of those guys been here for 19 years a career Patrol guy uh you know people take different paths throughout their careers Mike's was in Patrol um good guy hard worker did his job uh he's got two sons 24 and 26 years old his mom's still around uh he you know is somebody that you know I would describe it as just a cop doing his job the guy came to work every day did what we asked him to do and he worked the night shift by choice and pretty much for most of his career I think he was on nights I know you know I've talked to him many times had you know meetings conversations with him um you know just sad it really is and you know just leave us not my gut I mean you know I look at this is you know really you know this is two times in 18 months now no we go 109 years without a line of duty death and now you get two in 19 months but that's what it's the nature of the business it happens uh but I can tell you I'm very proud of all the work that the members of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office did uh last night and today uh they're all professionals they worked hard to make sure that we properly investigated this and got the bad guy in custody two of them where they belong and that's a out of respect for Mike to make sure that uh when this happened that uh we conducted ourselves professionally and took the appropriate action but you know again Mike's one of those guys uh that did his job uh and was doing his job out there last night and you know we thank him for his service and now it's time for us to offer our respects to him and offer our thanks to him uh as we walk through the next few days into next week and have a funeral service and go through that process ities yeah we're also told there's no question about it you know I mean it's hard uh you know it's you know it's not good you know but we're professionals we'll do our job and we'll get through it and and everybody here who has worked this thing last night and today and you know as we now plan for a funeral and services for Mike and we'll get the job done the way it needs to get done he was on last night is that part of their shift or is it special Duty or this is what you would call special Duty uh you know it's all I mean it's all on duty I mean you know it paid through the Sheriff's Office um uh he's on duty driving a marked car logged onto the system wearing a uniform it's it really doesn't matter it's really that's not a distinction he was a cop out there and doing his job providing and sometimes even on those things sometimes you know that line gets bored whether we use eye Duty people or people are coming in and working details but that's really not a distinction at all what's your message for workers who are very close to [Music] we're here for you you know we got it all here we got to all be here for each other and that you know as I went up and talked to his family uh this morning uh late this morning early this afternoon um you know it's a we're all family and we're going to be here and help you get through it uh be here for you today tomorrow next week next month next year and you know we'll never forget Mike and never forget his service and uh you know that you know there's no words there's no words yeah so we just need to be there for him and help them and help them through us the fact that um during two attacker actions what would you want the other companies that are doing the same thing look what happens when you do that you know I mean you know people say that this is victimless it's not victimless we got a dead deputy okay shouldn't be here you should have been driving that thing shouldn't have fled shouldn't have done any of this and companies are out there doing that why are they doing it of course that's a rhetorical question and I'll answer it is they're doing it because they're making money off it so are they making money now off of you got a dead deputy is it worth it really sure other workers that were giving you a hard time not giving you correct information can they be charged with anything or will ice go after them now or what well I just go after them yeah right yeah sure you know you know you know I I don't think they do that anymore um we could charge them with stuff but you know it's misdemeanor obstructing you know it's not worth it uh North Pinellas Safety Harbor area all right thanks everybody