Steve Burns
WMAL.com
ROCKVILLE – (WMAL) The Hooters on Rockville Pike that served the man who went on to strike and kill Montgomery County Officer Noah Leotta will be closing in November, Leotta’s father, Rich, told WMAL. It marks another victory for Leotta in his crusade to see nobody else die like his son did following the Maryland General Assembly’s passage of Noah’s Law earlier this year.
“It is a moral victory that showed this particular business broke the rules so significantly, it resulted in the death of my son,” Rich Leotta told WMAL soon after learning of the closure. “It doesn’t get my son back, but it’s a deterrent to other businesses that they need to comply with the rules that are set up to protect public safety.”
Police at the time said Luis Reluzco was served alcohol well beyond what should’ve been his limit at the Hooters in Rockville on the evening of December 3, 2015. He then got in his car and proceeded to strike the 24-year-old Leotta as he was conducting another DUI stop on Rockville Pike. Leotta died a week later.
His father called the Hooters restaurant “accomplices to my son’s execution.”
“None of this brings my son back to me,” Leotta said. “But as a deterrent, it can save lives because other businesses will look at this and say, ‘You know what, we need to do a better job. We are culpable in what happens here.”
The news comes after a phone call earlier this month that Leotta saw as suspicious. He said it came from someone representing Hooters wishing to donate money to Leotta’s memorial fund.
“I said, ‘no amount of money will buy me off from what should be done against this particular Hooters on Rockville Pike,'” Leotta told WMAL.
While the caller didn’t specifically ask for Leotta to drop his case against the Hooters, he said the timing was a strange coincidence.
The driver, Luis Reluzco, is scheduled to be sentenced next month, and Leotta hoped the Hooters news might be an influence.
“Seeing that the public is now safer because this business has been closed, (the judge) can also make the community safer, and do the right thing by victims come August 23.”
Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (Photo: Montgomery County Police Department/Twitter)
