Three days into 2020, Luis Echeverria-Navarete had a confession to make.

While at a Portland home gathering to play Monopoly, the 22-year-old told the group he hit and killed a pedestrian while driving along North Fessenden Street a couple of years earlier, one of the party hosts later told police.

The details sounded familiar to the host, who lived in the area and knew no arrests had been made in a 2017 crash involving a pedestrian on that same road. So she took out her cellphone and secretly recorded Echeverria-Navarete alluding to being drunk that night while trying to drive his girlfriend to Hillsboro in a BMW and that he hit the pedestrian, according to a probable cause affidavit.

“He admitted multiple times that he killed somebody,” the court papers said.

The woman told a police investigator on Thursday, six days after the party, that Echeverria-Navarete also said he crashed his car in Hillsboro sometime after hitting the person in Portland, the affidavit said. The woman said he seemed hesitant when she suggested he turn himself in.

He was arrested in connection with the Hillsboro crash in 2017. He pleaded guilty to drunken driving and assault, was sentenced in January 2018 to 13 months in prison and ordered by a Washington County judge to have his driver’s license revoked for life. It was his third conviction for driving under the influence of intoxicants, Oregon court records show.

2 Party confession led to arrest of driver suspected in 2017 Portland hit-and-run crash that killed pedestrian, records show

Authorities say the video footage and details of the confession helped investigators find the driver believed to be responsible for the Nov. 26, 2017, death of 24-year-old Daniel Ramsey III. Portland police had been seeking the public’s help for 26 months to find the driver of a 2001 to 2003 BMW 5 series car with likely heavy front-end damage that had been driving near the 7000 block of North Fessenden Street around 10 p.m.

Portland Police Assistant Chief Mike Frome said the combined efforts of his department, Hillsboro police and the community “was invaluable to solving this case.”

Ramsey had been hit in an unmarked crosswalk on Fessenden Street at the North Alma Avenue intersection with his girlfriend. Darian Conley told police that she and Ramsey were heading to get dinner and thought they would be able to safely cross but noticed a car speeding toward them after stepping into the roadway, the affidavit said.

Conley said she was holding hands with Ramsey when he was hit, tearing his grip from hers, according to the court papers. She estimated the car was traveling around 70 mph.

Police found Echeverria-Navarete while he was driving his girlfriend in Hillsboro on Thursday, pulled them over and arrested him on suspicion of killing Ramsey, the affidavit said. He remained held Friday in the Multnomah County Detention Center on suspicion of first-degree manslaughter, driving under the influence of intoxicants, failure to perform the duties of a driver and reckless driving.

The girlfriend told investigators she was also Echeverria-Navarete’s passenger on Nov. 26, 2017, but said she’d been very drunk that night, the affidavit said. She said she remembered awakening to the sound of a large thud while Echeverria-Navarete was driving and saw him panicking but didn’t know what he’d hit, the court papers said. She recalled there was a second collision the same evening that led to the arrest of her boyfriend.

The 2017 Hillsboro crash occurred a little more than an hour after the Portland crash, the affidavit said. A Portland police investigator was able to determine that Echeverria-Navarete was driving a dark maroon 1997 BMW 540 when he crashed in Hillsboro. According to the affidavit, an analysis of his blood after the crash found that his blood alcohol content was 0.17%, about twice the legal limit.

-- Everton Bailey Jr; ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 | @EvertonBailey

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