Two years after a 52-year-old man was killed on Northeast Pine Island Road, one of the two drivers Cape Coral police say were racing at 125 mph has pleaded no contest and been sentenced to a year in the Lee County jail
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One of the two drivers Cape Coral police say were racing at more than 125 miles an hour when a 52-year-old man was killed on Northeast Pine Island Road has been sentenced to a year in the Lee County jail.
The News-Press reports that Chase Magruder, 23, of Cape Coral, pleaded no contest on August 18 to vehicular homicide over the July 19, 2024 crash, changing his plea just as a trial in the case began.
The paper reports that Magruder entered an open plea, which left the sentence entirely to the court with nothing agreed in advance, and that Lee Circuit Judge Robert Branning sentenced him to one year in jail followed by two years of community control and three years of state probation.
Gulf Coast News reported the plea a day earlier, from court records, with the sentencing hearing then still ahead of him.
What police say happened on Pine Island Road
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 News-Press account of the department's investigation. Three vehicles were involved, one driver in each.
Two of the drivers survived without apparent injuries. The third, Alberto Almedo, 52, died shortly afterward at Cape Coral Hospital.
Police said their investigation found that immediately before the collision two vehicles were recorded on camera at Pine Island Road and Nicholas Parkway, and again east of there, traveling along together at high speed and appearing to be engaged in a street race. Almedo's vehicle did not appear on any of the 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 traveling at what they described as a considerably lower speed.
The News-Press reports that Magruder was arrested the night of the crash for drunken or impaired driving, and that the investigation that night found he was driving under the influence. Neither outlet reports a conviction on that.
The second driver has now been convicted
Update, August 20, 4:40 p.m. ET. After this brief was published, the News-Press reported that a Lee County jury convicted Anastasiya Zadorozhna, 29, of vehicular homicide on August 19. No sentence has been reported. Follow the case here.
The trial of the other driver, Anastasiya Zadorozhna, 29, began on August 18, the same day Magruder changed his plea. Everything above about how the two cars were being driven is what the Cape Coral Police Department says its investigation found.
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.
There is no document behind this brief. Neither the Lee County court file nor a State Attorney's Office release was read by this desk, so the sentence reported here is the News-Press account of what happened in Judge Branning's courtroom, credited that way. The Cape Coral Police Department's own site did not respond at all when this desk went looking for a release of its own.
Where we read it: Tomas Rodriguez at The News-Press. Read their story.
The document: No public filing has been released.
