Harold Allen says it was all a terrible mistake fueled by PCP. Las Vegas prosecutors say the 55-year-old deliberately stole an idling Hyundai Sonata outside a Walmart on West Charleston Boulevard, killing the immobile man inside when he slammed the car into a minivan, a boulder and a light pole at nearly 50 mph. Allen now sits in the Clark County Detention Center held without bail, facing an open murder charge that could carry a first-degree murder conviction, awaiting a trial set for February.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Allen told a reporter who visited him at the jail that he smoked PCP before heading to the Walmart near West Charleston Boulevard and South Arville Street, and that the drug — a hallucinogen known to cause agitation and delusions — left him believing the black Hyundai Sonata was the car he had arrived in. “I jumped in the wrong car, and didn't realize until I started pulling off,” Allen said, according to the outlet. He said his girlfriend had gone inside the store to buy cellphone accessories while he waited, and that once behind the wheel he noticed someone in the passenger seat and assumed it was her.
That passenger was 37-year-old Benito Saragosa, who was sitting in his mother's car because his feet were bothering him, according to the newspaper's reporting. Saragosa's mother, Deborah Requena, had brought her son to Walmart because his refrigerator was empty; she went inside and returned about an hour later to find her car gone, eventually discovering it had crashed at a nearby intersection. Requena testified before a grand jury in June, according to the Review-Journal, and has said her car never had issues with the gas or brakes.
A Witness Account That Contradicts the Suspect's Story
Allen has disputed allegations that he intentionally stole the vehicle, telling the newspaper the gas pedal got stuck and that Saragosa snatched the steering wheel as the crash unfolded. But police records cited by the Review-Journal describe a witness at the scene who told officers Allen said, “I was trying to beat the light” immediately after the collision — a statement documented in his initial arrest report that directly conflicts with his claim of a mechanical malfunction and drug-induced confusion.
Grand jury surveillance footage reviewed by the newspaper showed Allen entering the Walmart in a black ankle-length fur coat, t-shirt, pants, socks and sandals, carrying a white shopping bag when he exited. The footage showed him being escorted to the back of the optometry office and speaking with a staff member before he returned to the parking lot and got into the idling sedan. The same footage captured Requena pushing her shopping cart while searching for her missing car, unaware her son was still inside it.
A Victim Who Could Not Escape
Family members previously told KLAS-TV, as reported by Law & Crime, that Saragosa was a recovering alcoholic with heart failure operating at roughly 20 percent capacity, leaving him largely immobile and unable to escape or fight back once the car began moving. He routinely waited in vehicles during family errands because walking into crowded stores was physically difficult for him, and he had major swelling in his legs. His mother told the Review-Journal she helped him shower every day, made his breakfast, and cleaned his apartment at Siegel Suites.
Saragosa's sister, Shelley Saragosa, told KLAS-TV that her brother had a severe phobia of fast-moving vehicles, a detail that has added weight to the family's grief over how he died. After the crash, he was taken to University Medical Center, where the Clark County coroner's office determined his death resulted from a combination of aspiration of gastric contents, alcohol intoxication and motor vehicle crash injuries. Requena has said simply that her son was dead.
A Long Criminal History and a Relapse
Court records reported by the Review-Journal show Allen has been arrested more than a dozen times since 2000, with charges including battery, theft, trespassing and fraud, and police arrested him seven more times in the months before the April crash. He was convicted of grand larceny in 2021 and received probation after completing a specialty court program addressing drug addiction, but he relapsed and began using PCP again shortly after finishing the program, according to the newspaper's reporting.
Allen underwent competency evaluations in June and was found to have sufficient mental ability to understand the nature of his charges. He now faces six felony counts, including murder with a deadly weapon, grand larceny of a motor vehicle, and reckless driving resulting in death, charges that moved forward after a Clark County grand jury indictment. Nevada's open murder statute lets prosecutors present first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter counts to a jury simultaneously without committing to one degree in advance, a legal structure explained by the Nevada Legal Report. Prosecutors did not respond to the Review-Journal's requests for comment.
What Allen Faces in Court
Because the indictment includes deadly-weapon specifications, Allen also faces sentencing enhancements that, under Nevada criminal statutes described by the Las Vegas Defense Group, add one to 20 years of mandatory, consecutive prison time that a judge cannot suspend or convert to probation. Those enhancements would be layered on top of any sentence for the underlying felony counts if Allen is convicted. For now, he remains jailed ahead of his February trial, telling the Review-Journal he has never been in jail this long and insisting, “It was a freak accident. In my eyes. I don't think I killed him.”
