Former Anne Arundel cop pleads guilty to fleeing scene of fatal crash

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A former Anne Arundel County police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to leaving the scene of a deadly accident, marking the first guilty plea secured by the Maryland attorney general‘s office division tasked with investigating police-involved deaths.

Alexander Mason Rodriguez entered a plea agreement in Howard County Circuit Court, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office. Although Rodriguez pleaded guilty to one count of leaving the scene of a deadly accident in August 2024, he entered a plea of not guilty to seven counts of misconduct in office and negligent manslaughter.

He agreed to a five-year sentence with all but 120 days suspended, meaning he will spend about four months behind bars. He will be under supervised probation for two years, will do 100 hours of community service and will not work in law enforcement.

Rodriguez was represented by Chaz Ball of Schlachman, Belsky, Weiner & Davey in Baltimore; Peter Fayne of Rosenberg & Fayne in Riverdale Park; and solo practitioner John Boneta of Leesburg, Virginia. They did not respond to requests for comment.

“No one who endangers lives and then abandons a crash that resulted in a man’s death on the side of the road should be allowed to wear a police uniform,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement.

“By accepting this plea agreement, Rodriguez will never again serve as a law enforcement officer in Maryland,” Brown continued. “We cannot keep our communities safe if we do not hold people accountable when they break the law. The outcome that our office secured makes clear that no one is above the law, regardless of their career.”

Rodriguez was accused of conducting a high-speed chase after 4 a.m. one day in August 2024, without authorization from his superiors and without turning on his car’s siren or red and blue lights.

According to Brown’s office, the chase began after Rodriguez attempted to block Joshua VanderZiel’s motorcycle at a gas station. VanderZiel rode around the car and left the station. Rodriguez chased him for more than four miles through Anne Arundel, Prince George’s and Howard counties and exceeded 90 mph, according to the attorney general’s office.

As Rodriguez was chasing him, VanderZiel slammed into a flatbed truck and died on impact, officials said. Rodriguez allegedly stopped, made a U-turn and fled the scene, without checking to see if VanderZiel or the people in the truck needed help. He didn’t inform dispatch or his superiors, file a report or request emergency medical assistance.

VanderZiel was never accused of wrongdoing.

According to an obituary posted online, VanderZiel, 21, was a Russian linguist for the Navy who grew up in Wichita, Kansas.

Rodriguez’s case was the second brought by the attorney general’s Independent Investigations Division, which probes police-involved deaths and near-deaths, and its first guilty plea.

In the first case, the division charged two Anne Arundel cops after a similar chase that resulted in a man’s death in December 2023.

Charges were dropped before trial as prosecutors failed to show that they hadn’t used privileged information.

The defense said the prosecution might have used statements the officers were forced to make to internal investigators. Because those statements — known as Garrity statements — were compelled, they could not be used in the criminal case. Garrity statements are privileged because prosecutors’ use of them would violate a defendant’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The attorney general’s office argued it didn’t have enough of a chance to prove that it didn’t use those statements. Brown said the office had procedures in place to keep Garrity statements away from the prosecutors on the case and strengthened them after the case was thrown out.

The failure led to the resignations of the Independent Investigation Division’s top two officials, and the two officers were reinstated.

“(Rodriguez’s) actions, which led to this guilty plea, constituted a profound betrayal of public trust and are in no way reflective of the dedicated officers who serve our community daily,” Anne Arundel County Police Chief Amal Awad said in a statement shared by a spokesperson. “We remain steadfast in our dedication to the highest level of professional service and upholding the department’s values.”

This story has been updated with a comment from the Anne Arundel County Police Department.