Maryland

5 Charged After Police Chase, Crash Backed Up Beltway Friday

Five men are facing charges after they led police in a chase across two counties Friday. The chase ended with a crash that closed part of the Beltway in Maryland and the death of a sixth suspect who was struck by a car.

Several armed men with their faces hidden entered a Cash Depot store on Georgia Avenue in Wheaton and demanded money, which an employee handed over, Montgomery County Police said. The robbers got away in a white Chevrolet van, for which police broadcast a lookout.

Police spotted a van matching the description around Anne Street and University Boulevard East in Takoma Park, and plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle followed it onto the Inner Loop of the Beltway in the College Park area, police said.

The van collided with at least one vehicle near Route 1, police said, and the driver, 37-year-old Juan Carlos Gomez, got out of the vehicle and attempted to get away when he an unmarked police car hit him. Life-saving efforts by police failed, and Gomez died at the scene.

Suspects who ran from the van were arrested after a brief foot chase, police said. Others who stayed in the van also were arrested. 

The scene backed up the Inner Loop for more than 10 miles in Maryland during the evening rush hour Friday. Earlier Friday afternoon, southbound lanes of the Beltway were completely closed between Route 1 and Greenbelt Road in College Park.

Miguel A. Ayala-Rivera, 23; Marcio Roney Avila-Castro, 21; Yeruin J. Romero-Rivera, 21; Juan R. Ramirez-Delgado, 34; and Edwin Geovanny Zelaya-Ramirez, 17, were charged with armed robbery. Zelaya-Ramirez was charged as an adult, but police declined to release a mugshot because of his age. Ayala-Rivera also was charged in the Sept. 22 armed robbery of the Exxon gas station in the 12000 block of Veirs Mill Road.

The Exxon robbery is part of the investigation of a series of armed robberies in which multiple people armed with handguns and with their faces hidden enter businesses, threaten employees and demand cash, police said.

Maryland State Police are investigating the crash on the Beltway.

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