Woman shot, run over and left for dead testifies about attack in North Codorus Township

On the evening of June 11, Meredith Keltner was listening to music and dancing on the porch of a home on East Princess Street in York when she first met Roberto Rodriguez III. She’d seen him around, and they ended up spending the night at a nearby motel.

The next morning, Keltner said, she went along with Rodriguez in his 2004 Mazda 3 to pick up an acquaintance, Francisco Rivera, a man she’d known for several months as “Esteban.” 

She asked to get dropped off. Rodriguez, she said, told her that she’d have to wait.

Instead, Rodriguez drove to the area of Smyser Road and Indian Rock Dam Road in North Codorus Township. He started to become hostile, she said, and asked for money.  Then, he told her to get out of the car. 

Keltner said she was able to eventually grab some of her belongings and leave. She started walking away, with her back facing the car. “Stop,” the man said, “drop your bag.” She turned around.

“I honestly thought, and knew, he was going to kill me,” Keltner, 27, testified on Wednesday from a wheelchair during a preliminary hearing at District Court 19-3-06.

Rodriguez, she said, shot her in the face, causing extensive injuries that included a fractured skull. She blacked out.

She doesn’t remember being shot multiple times. She’s doesn’t remember being run over. And she doesn’t remember being left to die in the middle of a road in York County.

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District Judge Tom Reilly later ordered Rodriguez, 20, of York, to stand trial on charges including criminal attempt to commit criminal homicide in the attack. He’s being held on $200,000 bail in York County Prison and is set to be formally arraigned on Sept. 30.

Rivera, 28, of York, is also charged with criminal attempt to commit criminal homicide and related offenses. He’s currently locked up at the Riverside Correctional Facility in Philadelphia on drug charges, according to court records.

READ:York homicide: 18-year-old arrested for man's shooting death, police say

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Melanie Wiesman next called Northern York County Regional Police Detective Mark Baker as a witness.

Baker testified that he received a call at home to investigate a shooting. He reported to the intersection, where he recovered five casings, a piece of a car and some of Keltner’s belongings.

Keltner was taken in an ambulance to York Hospital. A passerby had reported at 9:21 a.m. that a woman was lying in the road.

“She was a bloody, mangled mess,” said Baker, who added that she had eight bullet holes in her, among other extensive, serious injuries.

Later, Baker testified, investigators showed her a picture of the home on East Princess Street and confirmed that’s where she’d been the night before the attack. Police executed a search warrant at the house and found some of the woman’s belongings in a room, exactly where she had described.

Law enforcement, he said, was able to track down the vehicle, which belonged to Rodriguez. The car part that investigators recovered in the intersection matched up perfectly to a piece that was missing in the undercarriage. And police obtained a receipt for a room that he’d paid for in cash and rented under his name at the motel.

Keltner picked Rodriguez out of a photo lineup, Baker said.

Rivera, he said, fled York County. But he left behind personal documents.

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During an interview, Rodriguez stated that he’d lent his car to someone in exchange for drugs, Baker testified.

Police interviewed Rivera, who “confirmed Ms. Keltner’s story almost exactly.”

At one point, Baker said, investigators asked him how Rodriguez was able to turn his car around in such a tight space.

Rivera, the detective said, replied, “He drove over her, dude.”

Contact Dylan Segelbaum at 717-771-2102.