OGDEN -- One of the men pursued by police as a burglary suspect in a fatal high-speed chase has been charged with a new burglary.
Andrew Gomez, 22, has a status conference Tuesday in 2nd District Court on a second- degree felony charge of burglary of a residence police say occurred Jan. 14.
Gomez was apprehended and arrested the same night and was formally charged Jan. 15
The incident came the same week of the postponement of Gomez's trial stemming from the April 22, 2009, chase that left two dead.
Gomez was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Mark Mora when Mora's car broadsided another at 28th Street and Washington Boulevard.
Instantly killed were Derek Jasper and Blake Strebel, two 19-year-olds returning home from a church basketball game.
Mora, 18, is charged with two counts of automobile homicide.
Mora, jailed on $100,000 bail, is set for a suppression hearing April 20, with trial scheduled for April 28-30.
Gomez's Jan. 11 trial was bumped to March 15 when he temporarily couldn't be located.
He is charged with assault on a police officer and resisting arrest when he tried to flee the scene of the crash.
Gomez has been jailed without bail since he was convicted on both of his charges after a three-hour trial March 15.
A jury needed less than 45 minutes to convict Gomez, said Deputy Weber County Attorney Ben Willoughby, prosecutor in the trial.
At the crash, Mora had been knocked unconscious, but it took four officers to restrain Gomez and handcuff him, he said.
"It was egregious because of what else was going on at the time," he said.
"The victims of the car crash were dead or dying ... less than 20 feet away."
A sentencing date will be set at Gomez's Tuesday hearing on the assault and resisting charges, likely followed by setting of a trial date on the new burglary charge.
"This from a kid everybody swore up and down in the media was not a burglar," Willoughby said.
Gomez was arrested Jan. 14 with two others police said were seen leaving a home in the 1000 block of Healy Street with pillowcases stuffed with what turned out to be stolen property.
Minutes after that information was broadcast, dispatch received a call of suspicious men carrying pillowcases in the 2600 block of Eccles Avenue.
The suspects were found hiding in a home there.





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