St. Paul man charged in hit-and-run death of man on mobility scooter
A St. Paul man with a history of traffic violations was charged Tuesday in connection with a fatal hit-and-run that killed a man on a mobility scooter last week.
Erick Gabriel Fuentes-Morales, 21, was charged with one felony count of criminal vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident he caused.
The criminal complaint gave the following details:
About 9:10 p.m. Feb. 11, officers responded to 911 calls about a hit-and-run at Phalen Boulevard near Rose Avenue in St. Paul. When they arrived they found a man on the ground near his mobility scooter and debris from a black car nearby, including a silver Nissan emblem.
The man was unresponsive and was having a seizure. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition. He briefly regained consciousness and was able to tell authorities who he was and that his only relative was his mother with dementia who wouldn’t understand what was happening.
The 66-year-old, Donald John Piele, of St. Paul, died the next day.
Investigators were able to obtain surveillance video that showed Piele in the crosswalk on his scooter when a person speeding in a black sedan hit him. The driver briefly stopped but then drove away.
The investigation led to officers pulling over a vehicle driven by Fuentes-Morales around 12:40 a.m. Friday. The vehicle had damage to the front passenger side, was missing pieces like those found at the scene of the hit-and-run and matched the black sedan’s description, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that Fuentes-Morales “appeared nervous and shivered.”
He agreed to speak after being read his right to remain silent. He said he was the only one who drove the vehicle and that the damage occurred a few days earlier when he crashed into a telephone pole. When officers said they had video of him in a crash, he allegedly nodded and said he should have called police.
Then he “looked away and refused to make eye contact when asked if he realized he hit a person,” the complaint said. When officers encouraged him to be honest he “admitted he knew he hit somebody,” the complaint said.
He denied “driving crazy or drunk,” the complaint said. He didn’t see the person until it was too late to avoid the crash, the complaint said.
When he was asked if he checked on the person he had struck with his vehicle, Fuentes-Morales allegedly said, “he was going to, but he said it was a long story,” the complaint said.
He told officers he had gotten off work at 8 p.m. that night. When officers asked what he did after getting off work and before he hit the man, he allegedly told them he sat in his vehicle and smoked marijuana and cigarettes.
The criminal complaint showed a traffic violation history for Fuentes-Morales that included a 2024 sentence for careless driving; several speeding violations in 2025 including one in which he was accused of passing a marked State Patrol vehicle, and running a red light in Ramsey County in December 2025.
