PDF: Cintron's record
Nearly five years after being charged in a fatal crash, a Chattanooga man who last year also was accused of beating his brother-in-law to death will stand trial in May on charges of vehicular homicide.
The case against Herineldo S. "Harry" Cintron began with the crash on June 19, 2005, that killed Deborah Kenyon, 44, and seriously injured her husband.
They were stopped at a traffic light on their motorcycle in Chattanooga when Mr. Cintron's Jeep struck them, throwing Ms. Kenyon from the bike, according to police.
Mr. Cintron also was thrown from his vehicle and suffered a head injury.
He will stand trial May 11 on vehicular homicide and vehicular assault charges.
Questions about Mr. Cintron's mental capacity to stand trial caused the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals to weigh in on the matter of his mental health, further delaying the trial.
Mr. Cintron's defense attorney in the vehicular homicide case did not return calls for comment.
Then, in April 2009, while out on $100,000 bail and after many mental health evaluations and court orders that found he was competent to stand trial, a domestic squabble over what Mr. Cintron wanted for dinner ended in the death of his sister's estranged husband, Ray Diaz.
"His sister was always saying ever since he hit his head on the concrete (in the crash), his brain has been deteriorating," Chattanooga Police Department homicide detective Karl W. Fields III said Friday of his initial investigation of the killing.
But Mr. Cintron seemed like he knew what was happening to him when he was arrested in the killing of Mr. Diaz, Detective Fields said.
"He was clear on what was going on. He respectfully requested a lawyer and declined to talk to us," Detective Fields said.
He is charged with the second-degree murder of Mr. Diaz, but a trial date in that case is not set.
A doctor who evaluated Mr. Cintron in the vehicular homicide case in 2007 testified at a hearing that Mr. Cintron's "overall level of function was higher than what he was portraying."
According to Detective Fields, Mr. Cintron, who had a metal walker, beat Mr. Diaz to death with that walker one night when he and the victim began arguing over what to eat for dinner and the victim's insistence that Mr. Cintron not eat in a back bedroom.