BEL AIR, MD (November 10, 2025) — A 21-year-old Yonkers, New York, man accused of ramming a Harford County Sheriff’s deputy with a stolen cooking oil truck during a high-speed pursuit on Interstate 95 has been extradited to Maryland and awaits trial on attempted murder and assault charges.
Juan Yahir Quiroz Manzueta, who also goes by aliases including Juan Quiroz-Manzueta and Juan Yahir Quiroz-Manzueta, was processed into the Harford County Detention Center on Friday, November 7, after declining to waive extradition and undergoing several weeks of legal proceedings in New York. He remains held without bail.
The saga began on August 26, 2025, when Lt. Rob Burgess, a 29-year veteran of the Harford County Sheriff’s Office assigned to the Community Policing Division, attempted a traffic stop on a rented Penske box truck weaving erratically between northbound and southbound lanes of I-95 near Aberdeen.
Quiroz Manzueta allegedly refused to pull over, sparking a chase in which he intentionally crashed into a mail truck, a passenger vehicle, a tractor-trailer and two unidentified vehicles, according to Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler.
The pursuit escalated when Quiroz Manzueta rammed the deputy’s position as Burgess tried to deploy stop sticks to deflate the truck’s tires, leaving Burgess with serious injuries. Burgess, who was alert and conscious, was transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was reported stable.
No injuries occurred in the other collisions, but Gahler said during an August 26 press conference at the Harford County Sheriff’s Office headquarters in Bel Air that all the crashes appeared intentional.
The truck, rented in New York and outfitted with siphoning and storage equipment for used cooking oil, contained oil stolen earlier that day from an Applebee’s restaurant in Aberdeen. Investigators recovered a phone and the rental agreement from the vehicle after Quiroz Manzueta crashed it and fled on foot down a nearby hill. GPS data from Penske traced the truck’s path and tied it to the theft.
Used cooking oil, a commodity often resold on the black market for biodiesel production or other purposes at $2 to $4 per gallon, has become a target for organized theft rings. Gahler noted that Quiroz Manzueta has a history of similar crimes and a complex four-part name that may indicate aliases linked to other unsolved cases.
The chase ended when another officer performed a PIT maneuver to halt the truck, but Quiroz Manzueta escaped to Delaware and called a woman in New York to pick him up at a travel plaza.
He was apprehended the next day, August 27, by the U.S. Marshals Service in a New Rochelle apartment at Hightower Garden, 11 Garden Street, based on a Maryland warrant. New Rochelle police confirmed the location but said they were not involved in the arrest.
Westchester County Department of Correction records show Quiroz Manzueta was booked into the county jail in Valhalla, New York, that day and taken into custody.
As of an August 28 press conference, Quiroz Manzueta faced charges including attempted second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault on a police officer, and related offenses. He faces other charges relating to the incident.
The pursuit shut down I-95 in both directions from Exit 89 to the Maryland House due to extensive police activity near Route 95 in Aberdeen. An individual was detained in connection with the incident but released after an interview with detectives from the Criminal Investigations Division as the probe into the driver’s identity continued.
Recent press conferences on the case are available on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CpLLDccF9/
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19dyTfDWFu/.
This article was drafted with the aid of Grok, an AI tool by xAI, under the direction and editing of Robert Cox to ensure accuracy and adherence to journalistic standards.
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