ELLWOOD CITY, Pa. — Police have identified and charged a man accused of stealing a truck and crashing it in Lawrence County.
Court documents say keys to a pickup truck were stolen from inside a house at the 1200 block of Lawrence Avenue on Friday. That truck was then stolen and later crashed.
On Saturday, police asked the public to check for surveillance video of the suspect to help with their investigation.
The investigation has led to charges being filed against Rameiro Javier Cruz-Mendoza, 21.
When police first responded to the crash they ran the license plate number and found the owner. They went to the owner’s house and quickly learned he had not even realized the truck had been stolen yet. He was even more upset because his teen daughter was in the house at the time the keys were stolen and he worried things could have been worse.
Officers said they found a phone in the truck that was in the process of filming a video on Facebook Messenger. The video showed the truck leaving and the actor specifically saying, “I just stole that [expletive] truck.” The camera was facing out the windshield and showed it traveling from the house on Lawrence Avenue to the crash site. Police checked the account the Facebook account the video was recorded from and said it belonged to Cruz-Mendoza.
Investigators were familiar with Cruz-Mendo because they had dealt with him in a public drunkenness situation just a few days earlier.
They recognized him and identified him in multiple surveillance videos that matched what was happening in the video recorded inside the vehicle and the times. Police said he was spotted on camera getting into the stolen vehicle.
Police said he tried breaking into several other vehicles along Beaver Avenue and they are working with the victims in those situations to learn more.
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