A Lee County jury has convicted the second driver in the 2024 Cape Coral street race that killed Alberto Almedo, one day after the other driver pleaded no contest and was sent to jail

A Lee County jury has convicted the second driver in the July 2024 Cape Coral street race that killed a 52-year-old motorist, one day after the other driver pleaded no contest and was sent to the county jail.

The News-Press reports that the jury on August 19 convicted Anastasiya Zadorozhna, 29, of Cape Coral, of vehicular homicide in the death of Alberto Almedo, 52, on July 19, 2024.

The paper reports that the jury convicted her despite a defence argument that an underlying health condition was what led her to floor the pedal.

No sentence and no sentencing date had been reported when this brief was published. On August 21 the State Attorney's Office for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit said she will be sentenced on September 28, 2026, and this desk covered that here. Vehicular homicide is a second degree felony in Florida.

How this sits next to the other driver

The other driver, Chase Magruder, 23, of Cape Coral, pleaded no contest to vehicular homicide on August 18, the same day Zadorozhna's trial began. He entered an open plea, which left the sentence entirely to the court, and Lee Circuit Judge Robert Branning gave him a year in the Lee County jail followed by two years of community control and three years of state probation. This desk covered that sentence this morning, and at that point no verdict in Zadorozhna's case had been reported anywhere.

A plea and a jury conviction are not the same posture in front of a sentencing judge, so the year Magruder received should not be read as a forecast of what Zadorozhna will receive.

What police said happened

Cape Coral Police officers were called at about 1:40 a.m. on July 19, 2024 to a crash with injuries at the 900 block of Northeast Pine Island Road, according to the department's investigation as reported by the News-Press. Three vehicles were involved, one driver in each. Two drivers survived without apparent injuries. Almedo died shortly afterward at Cape Coral Hospital.

Police said their investigation found that two vehicles were recorded on camera at Pine Island Road and Nicholas Parkway, and again east of there, travelling together at high speed and appearing to be engaged in a street race. Almedo's vehicle did not appear on any of those recordings. Investigators put the two vehicles between 125 and 129 mph, in the report's words with "100 percent accelerator application during that time," while Almedo's vehicle was travelling at what they described as a considerably lower speed.

The State Attorney's Office approved and issued arrest warrants for both drivers on May 12. Zadorozhna surrendered at the Lee County Jail on May 13, 2025. The U.S. Marshals Service detained Magruder on May 29 in Susquehanna Township, Pennsylvania, and he was extradited to Lee County.

What is behind this brief

One outlet. The News-Press, reported by Tomas Rodriguez, is the only outlet carrying this verdict as of this writing, and its story is behind a paywall that renders only the opening to a reader without a subscription. WINK News does not have it and a news aggregator search on both names turned up no second account. No court record was read: the Lee County Clerk of Court site refused this desk outright, and the State Attorney's Office for the 20th Judicial Circuit had published nothing on the case at the time of writing. The conviction reported here is the News-Press account of what a Lee County jury did on August 19. The State Attorney's Office published its own account of the trial and the conviction the following afternoon, August 21, together with the sentencing date, and that release is covered here.