Trial opens in tow-truck killing case

Although the slaying occurred in darkness, the surveillance video clearly captured a large tow truck repeatedly running over - then backing over - a man lying in a pub parking lot at Frankford and Lehigh Avenues.

The victim, Ray Santiago, 30, of Gillespie Street near Unruh Avenue, worked as a tow-truck driver for Siani's Towing. He was pronounced dead at 3:15 a.m. Sept. 26, 2010.

The alleged killer was a driver for a rival company, Straight Up Towing. The trial of Glen McDaniel, 27, of Aramingo Avenue near Somerset Street, charged with murder and related offenses, began Tuesday.

Public defender Geoffrey Kilroy said in his opening statement that McDaniel did not have a "malicious intent to kill." But he had been drinking all day at a family cookout and then at a bar, and was eventually called to help defuse a dispute between drivers from the two companies, Kilroy said.

By then, McDaniel was a drunken man "trying to get a large tow truck out of a small lot," Kilroy said.

He told Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey Minehart, who is hearing the trial without a jury, that his client hit the victim by accident and should be convicted only of involuntary manslaughter.

Assistant District Attorney James Berardinelli countered in his opening statement that McDaniel not only murdered the victim after losing a fistfight, but fled and called 911 claiming to be a victim.

During the vehicular stampede, the front wheels on McDaniel's Ford truck temporarily locked because the victim's body became entangled, Berardinelli said.

The trouble started at a gas station parking lot across from the bar.

The defendant and coworkers quarreled with the victim and one of his coworkers over which company's driver should get the right to park near Frankford and Lehigh, according to prosecution witness Jonathan Marrero, who drove for Siani's.

Marrero, 24, said that he told Santiago to leave, but that Santiago instead drove his tow truck across the street to O'Reilly's Pub, and that McDaniel followed in his truck.

Both men got out and started to fight before McDaniel got back in his truck, Marrero said.

"I seen a tow truck run over him several times," he said, and identified McDaniel as the driver.

Santiago died at Temple University Hospital of multiple blunt-impact injuries to the brain, ribs, lungs and elsewhere, according to a report from the Medical Examiner's Office.