Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 3, 1995                   TAG: 9508030027
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOME DAYS, IT JUST DOESN'T PAY TO GET UP

It started before dawn. His girlfriend says she and Maldonado were awakened by three masked gunmen who kicked in their door. They forced the couple to stand against the wall, then robbed them.

Three hours later, Maldonado ran over someone with a Chevy Blazer, he told police.

A couple of hours after that, Roanoke police charged him with felony hit-and-run.

Maldonado, 21, spent Tuesday night in the Roanoke City Jail.

Police gave this account of Maldonado's day:

He and his girlfriend, Rosalind M. Hairston, also 21, were asleep at their home on Rugby Boulevard Northwest. Hairston told police that at 5 a.m., three armed men burst through the front door.

A stocky man - about 5 feet 8 inches tall and perhaps 220 pounds - wore a white ski mask. A tall, thin man wore a black ski mask. A small man had a jacket zipped up over his head.

Hairston said that as she and Maldonado stood against the wall, the men demanded over and over: Where is the money? One man ransacked the other rooms. Another watched from the hallway. The third took a handgun from the bed - and a safe from the bedroom floor. There was $500 in the safe, Hairston said.

The robbers then fled.

At 8:02 a.m., police responded to a call from Eureka Park and found a man bleeding, bruised and complaining of back pain.

Mosi Akil Coleman, 19, told officers that he had been riding a mountain bike near the park when two men drove by and stared at him.

He said the four-wheel-drive vehicle turned around, sped back, crossed the street and slammed into him. He said he managed to hold on to the front of the vehicle as it ran over a pole and headed across the park, its wheels spinning in the grass. It hit the parking lot, ran over another pole and, Coleman said, ran over him after he fell off.

Then it was gone.

Investigators estimated that Coleman had been carried 525 feet.

About two hours later, Maldonado and another man came to the Roanoke City Jail. According to police, Maldonado told jail personnel that he accidentally had run over someone, become scared, then fled.

Police found the four-wheel-drive abandoned in Roanoke County. Its radio, license tags and stickers had been removed - in order, police figured, to make it appear it had been stolen.

After his initial statement about the incident with the Blazer, Maldonado would not say anything else. Police charged him with hit-and-run. The second man, who was not identified, was not charged with anything.

Officers are still investigating the robbery at his home. They would not say whether they believed there was any connection between the robbery and the hit-and-run.

Maldonado was still in jail Wednesday night.