Man enters plea in 2021 car crash that killed couple

Omar Martinez entered a plea Wednesday to charges that he was using drugs and ran a red light in 2021 when he T-boned a car in an Albuquerque intersection, fatally injuring a married couple.

The July 25, 2021 collision killed Robert and Bonnie Hartwig of Las Cruces at the intersection of Louisiana and Lomas NE.

Martinez, 37, pleaded no contest to two counts of vehicular homicide, driving while intoxicated, and faces up to 20 years in prison under the plea agreement.

Second Judicial District Judge Lucy Solimon has not scheduled Martinez’s sentencing hearing.

Martinez was driving a 2014 GMC Sierra pickup east on Lomas when he crashed into the driver’s side of the Hartwig’s 2016 Volvo, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Metropolitan Court.

A crash data retrieval report showed that Martinez was driving east on Lomas at 84 mph in the moments before the crash, or more than twice the posted speed limit of 40 mph, the affidavit said.

Prosecutor Derek Berg told the judge that Martinez was traveling about 70 mph at the moment of impact.

Robert Hartwig was driving a 2016 Volvo with Bonnie Hartwig in the passenger seat north on Lomas when it entered the Louisiana intersection, the affidavit said. Martinez ran a red light and struck the driver’s side of the Volvo.

Bonnie Hartwig’s brother, Gary Fritcke, said Wednesday the couple had driven up from Las Cruces to meet their son’s girlfriend for the first time and were driving to an Albuquerque hotel at the time of the crash.

Martinez was taken to a hospital where Albuquerque police obtained a warrant to draw his blood, the affidavit said.

A toxicology report, completed in March 2022, about nine months after the fatal crash, found fentanyl and other drugs in Martinez’s system, it said. A warrant for Martinez’s arrest was issued just days after the toxicology report was issued.

Fritcke said the family is frustrated by the lengthy delay in processing the toxicology tests.

“I’ll just say it’s a light sentence and we’re very disappointed in how long it took to get to this point,” Fritcke said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

The U.S. Marshals Service fugitive apprehension team arrested Martinez in August 2022 near Coal and Yale SE.