Jordan Randolph convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of Jonathan Flores-Maldonado
A Bellport man with a long history of drunken driving arrests was convicted Wednesday in the January 2020 death of a Hampton Bays man whose vehicle he rear-ended while driving 137 mph in an early morning attempt to evade police on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley.
A Suffolk County jury convicted Jordan Randolph, 43, on all 13 counts at trial before state Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro in Riverhead, including a top charge of aggravated vehicular homicide. Randolph, who has three prior DWI convictions, is facing 12 1/2 to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced March 28, though he could receive a life sentence if the court determines him to be a persistent felony offender.
“We finally have some kind of closure,” said Victor Maldonado, whose son Jonathan Flores-Maldonado was killed in the crash. “Hopefully we have a bad guy off the street.”
Maldonado, who attended each day of the four-week trial, described his 27-year-old son as “amazing,” and said he had a dream of one day becoming a doctor.
But at 4 a.m. on Jan. 12, 2020, as he drove 45 mph down a northbound lane of William Floyd Parkway, his hopes came to an end as Randolph’s Cadillac approached his Ford Escape from behind, striking and flipping the vehicle to its side and dragging it 600 feet down the highway, prosecutors said.
The jury found it was Randolph, who had six total felony and six misdemeanor convictions in his past, who was behind the wheel of the other vehicle. Randolph's case became a flashpoint in the debate over the state’s bail reform laws, which went into effect the month of the crash, after it was revealed he had made a court appearance related to an earlier DWI conviction just two days before the fatal crash.
A series of surveillance videos taken from businesses along the busy corridor and shared at trial showed what prosecutors described as Randolph being followed by a police car and making a U-turn to distance himself from the pursuing officer before slamming into Flores-Maldonado’s SUV.
“This defendant made a series of selfish, deadly and otherwise reckless choices,” District Attorney Ray Tierney said in a statement.
After the verdict was read, Randolph’s court-appointed attorney, Joseph Hanshe, said he intends to file an appeal of the conviction. He contends that investigators failed to review DNA on Randolph’s steering wheel and key fob and intends to raise those issues on appeal.
During closing arguments Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Carl Borelli, who tried the case with colleague Jacob DeLauter, pointed to a DNA sample from the driver’s side air bag that showed Randolph was behind the wheel at the point of impact.
A memorial plaque was dedicated to Flores-Maldonado at Hampton Bays High School, where he graduated nearly a decade before losing his life. His ashes were scattered at the site, his father said.
When the verdict was read Wednesday, Maldonado let out an audible sob as he was consoled by another of his sons.
Asked what he was feeling at that moment, the father of four gave a one-word response: “Hurt.”
Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.
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