Trial Date Set For Delco Man Charged With Montco Stabbing

LOWER PROVIDENCE, PA — A Delaware County man will face a jury of his peers late next month who will decide whether he is guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his ex-girlfriend.

Freddy Remigio Mendieta Pando, 23, of Upper Darby, has been charged with killing 23-year-old Karina Torres, and dumping her body along a section of the Schuylkill River Trail in Lower Providence Township, Montgomery County back on Sept. 11, 2021.

Court records show that Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge William R. Carpenter scheduled a jury trial to begin on March 21, which is expected to last about a week.

Pando is charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder and possessing an instrument of crime.

He is currently in custody because bail is not afforded to defendants in first-degree murder cases in Pennsylvania.

Prosecutors say that Pando stabbed Torres to death and left her body along the Schuylkill River Trail at the Betzwood Trailhead entrance.

The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office has said that the killing might have been related to a domestic case against Pando; he was apparently looking at spending significant time in prison stemming from strangulation charges in relation to a prior domestic incident with Torres down in Delaware County, where the two resided.

Penalties had been stiffened over the years in Pennsylvania strangulation cases, and if Pando was found guilty in connection with that case, and for violating a protection from abuse order, he would have been looking at years behind bars.

A criminal complaint provided by the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office stated that Pando, a native of Ecuador, had walked up to the Upper Darby Police Department headquarters on Sept. 16, 2021, at around 11:50 a.m., where he approached Detectives Brian Gieder and William Gottsch.

Pando then showed the two detectives the screen of his cellphone, which displayed a language translation app, after which he spoke into the phone and the app translated his statement to read, "I killed my partner," according to the complaint.

The complaint says that Pando had met up with Torres at the Schuylkill River Trail in Lower Providence Township to discuss the ongoing domestic case.

Pando stated that he then stabbed Torres in the chest numerous times, threw the knife into the nearby Schuylkill River and concealed the woman's dead body under some trees, the complaint states.

The Upper Darby detectives subsequently provided this information to Montgomery County detectives and Lower Providence Police; authorities in Montgomery County soon located the victim's body with the help of Pando, according to prosecutors.

In the earlier strangulation case against him, Pando had been charged and subsequently released from custody after posting $2,500 bail.

In July 2021, Torres obtained a protection from abuse order against Pando, mere days after Pando's release from police custody.

Pando ultimately told Montgomery County investigators that he met up with Torres in Upper Darby on the day of the killing and the two drove together to the trailhead to talk about the ongoing domestic case.

Pando had claimed that it was Torres who had pulled out a knife during the encounter, but that he ultimately disarmed her and used the weapon to stab her repeatedly, according to the criminal complaint.