When Robert Corchado goes to trial in the April hit-and-run crash at Goldenrod Road KinderCare, prosecutors won't be able to tell his jury about another crash months earlier involving illegal drugs, a judge ruled this week.
Corchado, 29, faces several felonies, including leaving the scene of a fatal accident and heroin trafficking, in connection with the crash at the Orange County day care April 9.
The case is currently set for trial Dec. 1.
Prosecutors say Corchado rear-ended a
Toyota Solara on Goldenrod Road. The car's driver lost control and drove into the day care, injuring a dozen children, including
4-year-old Lily Quintus, who died at a local hospital.
Authorities say Corchado abandoned the sport utility vehicle he was driving at a nearby house, leaving behind packages of heroin, cocaine and marijuana in the vehicle as he scrambled to evade a region-wide manhunt.
Prosecutors in the day care crash had hoped to use evidence from an earlier collision in the upcoming trial: In December, Seminole County deputies say Corchado crashed into a parked vehicle in a car full of drugs.
The state has to prove that Corchado knew, or should have known, that the day care crash had caused serious injury or death when he fled, and argued the Seminole County crash would help with that element of the case.
The reason: In the December crash, Corchado is suspected of trying to ditch the drugs before deputies arrived.
In the KinderCare crash, he left the illicit materials behind for authorities to find — because he was so "freaked out" by the chaos he'd just caused at the day care, prosecutor Ryan Williams argued in a recent hearing.
In an order this week, Circuit Judge Greg Tynan rejected that argument. He said the state's theory of why Corchado left the drugs behind is "too tenuous" to link the two cases sufficiently "to make such evidence relevant."
