Man arrested, charged in Almeda Mall hit-and-run

HOUSTON – Two months of searching, and video from a mall surveillance camera, helped police track down the man suspected of twice running over a woman and nearly killing her.

Joniska Walker, 24, was critically injured after being run over in November in the parking lot of Almeda Mall.

"It's pretty hard. It's hard," said Walker. "It's tough to look at the scars. At first, I didn't want to wear stuff like this because the scars remind me of the wreck."

Walker said she had been walking to her job at Burlington on Nov. 15.

Walker lived nearby and worked the early-morning shift. Just before she got to the parking lot, Walker said, a man had driven up and offered her a ride. She declined and when she got to the mall parking lot, she said she saw the same man sitting in his car.

"He turned his lights on and turned around and starred at me a little bit," said Walker.

Sensing danger, Walker said she pulled a box cutter out of her bag just as the driver sped forward and knocked her onto the hood of his car.

"I start holding on to the hood and I'm looking at him face to face. I remember his eyes and they looked so evil," said Walker.

When the driver stopped, Walker flew off the hood and was run over a second time.

"I'm, like, 'Jesus, Jesus, please send somebody,' because I'm bleeding. I'm constantly bleeding and I could smell the blood and the cement," said Walker. "When I tried to turn on my back it's like my whole body just flopped down and I said, 'Oh, my body is broken.'"

Walker managed to call her boyfriend, who then called for an ambulance and police.

One of Walker's arms was broken, her clavicle was severely bruised, her pelvis was broken and several patches of skin had been scraped off. Walker said she underwent several hours of surgery and spent a 1 1/2 months in the hospital. Walker said it will be a year before she can walk normally again.

"From my pelvis being broken, they had put a screw in my leg. It's, like, numb. So I can't move it on my own," said Walker.

Fortunately, surveillance cameras at the mall captured the crime and gave detectives a partial license plate. That led them to Javier Deleon Hernandez. He was arrested four days ago and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

"I ain't never been through stuff like that because I'm used to watching Lifetime where stuff like that happens and when I actually go through it, it's, like, man, like, it's really crazy people in this world," said Walker.

Walker says she had never seen Hernandez before that day and still has no idea why she was targeted.


About the Author:

Award winning investigative journalist who joined KPRC 2 in July 2000. Husband and father of the Master of Disaster and Chaos Gremlin. “I don’t drink coffee to wake up, I wake up to drink coffee.”