Here is another tragic story about drunk-driving illegal aliens killing a young American, in this case Josh George (pictured) of Bluffton, South Carolina.

The 17-year-old high school student was struck apparently by a carload of of illegal aliens as he was driving home from the prom and died three days later in a Savannah hospital.

The identity of the driver remains unclear. The police arrested an illegal Mexican, Juan Roman, aka Juan Olague Rodriquez, but the DNA evidence on the beer cans in the vehicle didn’t match up. So the guy is going to be deported rather than prosecuted. He lived in a house with several others who have since left town.

Investigators believe three men were inside the Subaru that night. The trio had been drinking at Palomas, a predominately Hispanic bar off S.C. 46.

All of the people living in the Vista View home left within two days of the fatal wreck, leaving police with two unknown DNA profiles and no witnesses.

Their employer, a local painting company, began checking their immigration status the following Monday. The landlord told police the group had moved out quickly and he had no idea where they went.

Police and prosecutors remain interested in finding them.

“We’ve spent the better part of two-and-a-half months trying to locate them to no avail,” McAllister said.

Authorities aren’t even sure if the names they provided are real.

“That’s an ongoing challenge with undocumented immigrants,” Stone said.

The DNA profiles gathered from the beer cans inside the car will be loaded into a national database, in case the two other men in the car are ever involved in a crime.
[Solicitor drops charges against man first suspected in crash that killed Josh George, Island Packet, July 16, 2009]

Hopefully the real killer will be caught at some point through the DNA evidence. But that won’t change the loss of a young man with his whole life ahead of him in a totally preventable crime.

The fatal wreck stunned the community because it claimed the life of what Josh George’s high school principal called a “top-shelf kid.” George was a gifted student and captain of the varsity soccer team.

His family had known tragedy before.

George’s father died in 2001 when the F-16 he was piloting crashed near Edwards Air Force Base in California. Father and son are buried next to one another in Huntington, W.Va.

The Donohue family of Brewster, New York, was brutally cut in half June 8 when the daughter, Kayla, and her mom, Lori, were run down in the parking lot of the little girl’s dance academy by a drunk-driving illegal alien: [Local Family Destroyed By Alleged DWI Crash, WCBS-TV, June 10, 2009].

A mother and daughter were killed instantly on Monday evening after they were hit by a suspected drunk driver. It happened in Brewster and on Tuesday friends of the family held a candlelight vigil. [...]

On Tuesday grief counselors met with the young dancers, some of whom witnessed the devastating site as the young girl became pinned against the wall. Her mother was below the truck.

Behind the wheel was 35-year-old Zacaria Conses Garcia. It was 6:45 p.m. Monday when his Ford pickup truck barreled through a Brewster intersection and into the dance academy parking lot.

Garcia was driving without a license, in the country illegally.

Eight-year-old Kayla had been practicing for a dance recital later in June. Putnam County Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher York remarked, “The only thing I can think was that this little girl was dancing a few hours ago.”

The drunk driver, Zacaria Conses-Garcia, worked for a local horse trainer, Valerie Ann Renihan, who actually owns the Ford 350 pickup which killed Lori and Kayla Donohue. Renihan claimed ignorance about the truck, but neighbors of the accused said the truck was routinely parked at his residence overnight.

Conses-Garcia had a blood alcohol level of .15, which is nearly twice the New York threshhold for intoxication (.08). He is a citizen of Guatemala and has been charged with first-degree vehicular manslaughter, a felony, and driving while intoxicated. He remains in Putnam County jail with a $150,000 bail.

Below, the Donahue family at an earlier time, before the mother and daughter were killed by a drunk-driving illegal alien.

Two young people with their whole lives ahead of them, Tad Mattle and Leigh Anna Jimmerson (pictured), were killed by a previously arrested drunk-driving illegal alien, Felix Ortega (shown in the inset photo). The crash occurred April 17 in Huntsville, Alabama.

The man accused of killing two local teens in a car crash last month has been identified as an illegal immigrant and will face deportation after facing murder charges in Madison County, jail officials said Friday.

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on 25-year-old Felix Dominquez Ortega, who has been in jail since his arrest.

Ortega has been charged with two counts of murder, driving without a license, possession of a forged instrument and a seatbelt violation. Police said he was apparently drunk when he fled from officers April 17 and crashed his truck into another vehicle at Whitesburg Drive and Airport Road. He killed 16-year-old Leigh Anna Jimmerson of Grissom High School and 19-year-old Tad Mattle, a recent Grissom grad. [...]

Police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said Ortega was wanted at the time of crash for an outstanding warrant for driving under the influence. Officers contacted ICE shortly after Ortega’s arrest, because he provided forged identification.

It took police, jail administrators and ICE agents several weeks to determine Ortega’s citizenship because of his multiple aliases.
[Murder suspect here illegally, Huntsville Times, May 16, 2009]

More than 700 people attended Tad’s and Leigh Anna’s funerals.

Leigh Anna was a sophomore at Grissom High School and was part of the color guard. Tad was also involved in the band as a drummer until he graduated in May 2008. He pursued automotive repair in high school and planned to get a mechanical engineering degree at UAH. He was also an Eagle Scout and an accomplished vertical caver.

The victims were killed when Mattle’s Supra was rear-ended by Felix Ortega’s truck and the car burst into flames.

The previously arrested drunk-driving illegal alien who killed 7-year-old Marcus Lassiter in North Carolina last year was quickly found guilty and sentenced. (For background on this case, see my 2008 blog Another Child Sacrificed on the Altar of Open Borders.)

A Johnston County man was found guilty this morning of second-degree murder and driving while impaired for hitting and killing a 7-year-old Selma boy in April 2008.

Hipolito Camora Hernandez of Parkertown Road in Four Oaks was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.

A witness told the state Highway Patrol that Marcus Lassiter was standing on the side of two-lane Heath Road north of Four Oaks when a car lost control on a curve, ran onto the shoulder and struck him. Investigators determined the driver came into the curve at about 70 mph, 25 mph above the posted speed limit.

Hernandez had been charged with drunken driving at least four times before the accident that killed Marcus, but he had never been convicted. At the time of the crash, he was wanted by police for failing to show up in court to answer to one of the previous charges, according to prosecutors.

A judge sentenced Hernandez to at least 16 years, 4 months in prison and to a maximum of more than 20 years.
[Johnston man convicted for murder, DWI, News & Observer, Raleigh NC, May 21, 2009]

If it were up to me, any drunk-driving illegal alien who causes a death should get a mandatory life in prison.

The new administration has sent nothing but bad signals about immigration law enforcement. One indicator is how successful strategies like 287(g) and E-Verify have come under attack. The 287(g) section of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act set up procedures and legal authority for local police to assist federal enforcement, in particular to check the status of persons already arrested.

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) has been a strong supporter of enforcement, particularly against drunk-driving illegal aliens, who have killed innocent citizens in her district and state. She first introduced the Scott Gardner Act, named for one victim, in 2005. It would have required all illegal aliens found guilty of drunk driving to be immediately deported after their incarceration.

Rep. Myrick and Mecklenburg County Sheriff Chipp Bailey had a press conference on Monday to set straight how 287(g) has been used locally with positive results [Sheriff Bailey, Congresswoman Myrick defend deportation program, WFAE-FM, Charlotte NC, March 9, 2009].

In the last two weeks Duke University and the Government Accountability Office in Washington released reports criticizing the immigration program known as 287g. They say it is being used to nab petty criminals for things like traffic violations rather than serious crimes. They also say it fuels a fear of racial profiling among Hispanics.

Congresswoman Sue Myrick sees a deeper meaning in the Washington report.

“I think it was unfair and I think it was biased in the way it did it,” Myrick said Monday at a press conference at the Mecklenburg County Jail. ”And the administration, I’m concerned, is laying the groundwork frankly to gut the funding for the 287g program.  And this to me says we are just giving up the fight on illegal immigration, period.”

Mecklenburg County was one of the earliest to participate in 287g in 2006. The program gives sheriff’s deputies the ability to determine the legal status of immigrants in the county jail.

So far, Mecklenburg County has processed about 6,000 illegal immigrants for deportation. A majority were accused of misdemeanors and traffic violations. [Mecklenburg Sheriff Chipp] Bailey says most were arrested only after failing to appear in court on a previous citation. He insists his deputies do not check for immigration status until a person has been arrested for another offense.

If federal authorities wanted the program to focus only on serious criminals, Bailey says they never said so.

“It says, that if they are arrested then we should check’ em.  And that’s exactly what we do.  There’s no delineation about the type of crime that they’re brought into,” he said.

Both reports place much of the blame for problems with 287g on inadequate communication and oversight by federal immigration authorities. Still, Bailey maintains Mecklenburg County is safer because of it. He says it’s resulted in the deportation of more than 500 accused felons.

The Mecklenburg County information page on immigration notes the basics of the 287(g) program and how it is followed there.

Under 287(g), ICE provides state and local law enforcement with the training and subsequent authorization to identify, process, and when appropriate, detain immigration offenders encountered during their regular, daily law-enforcement activity. [...]

Using equipment and technology called IDENT, deputies now fingerprint and photograph all non US born arrestees.  The IDENT system searches a special biometric database that only contains information on aliens that have been arrested by immigration or have had some other type of immigration encounter.  Additional information regarding an arrestee’s immigration status will be determined based on an in-depth interview of the individual.

That sounds pretty straightforward. What’s the problem? Is enforcement working too well? Mecklenburg County got rid of 500 accused felons and is doubtless a safer place because of it.

You can read the GAO report online, Immigration Enforcement: Better Controls Needed over Program Authorizing State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws. A major complaint seems to be that the program snares persons for “minor crimes, such as speeding.” Reckless driving is not serious? Many Americans have been killed by drunk and/or speeding illegal aliens.

And whatever happened to “broken windows” policing that was so popular for a while? The idea was for police to take out bad guys for lesser crimes and that approach would decrease the incidence of big stuff. “Broken windows” has been successful, but an inclusive approach to illegal aliens already in jail (!) brings out the open-borders wackos, both in and out of government. They want zero immigration enforcement, and don’t care about the price paid in blood and suffering by American victims of illegal alien criminals.

Christmas will have a hole in the hearts of the family of Lola Jayne, who was recently killed by a previously arrested drunk-driving illegal alien [Alleged Drunk Driver Was Illegal Immigrant, KSN-TV, Wichita, Dec 19, 2008].

A frustrated family is speaking out after their mother was killed by an alleged drunk driver.  They say they’ve learned the man was an illegal immigrant and has been in trouble with the law before.

It’s all leaving them with questions about why he was allowed to stay in the country, in the first place.

Seventy-five-year-old Lola Jayne was a vibrant mother of eight, married for 58 years. She loved life but understood its dangers.

“My mom and dad would avoid going out on New Year’s Eve, you know, because that’s the time that everyone drinks and drives,” said her daughter, Shelia Reaser.

Yet at 6:30 on a Saturday evening, as she was driving on 21st Street to bingo, the driver of an oncoming car crossed the center line and hit her. She died the next day.
  
“This should never have happened, never have happened,” said Reaser.

The driver of that oncoming car was 25-year-old Baltazar Marquez, who police say was drunk.

“We’re all devastated and very disappointed in the system,” said another daughter, Linda Stilwell.

Jayne’s family has since learned Marquez was in this country illegally.  He didn’t have a driver’s license or insurance. And he’s been pulled over before.

“Our feelings are why was he not deported at that point,” said Stilwell.

ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, tells KSN it relies on and encourages individual law enforcement agencies to inform them when they run across immigrants in this country illegally.

The Wichita Police Department, however, says it only notifies ICE if illegal immigrants are involved in felony cases where the suspect poses a severe danger to the community.

According to Jayne’s family, after the first stop Marquez was charged with four misdemeanors.  

“He was stopped back in September. Why couldn’t they have taken him in then and my mom would still be alive?” said Stilwell

Alive to enjoy a big family Christmas and to see her granddaughter, who was stricken with bacterial spinal meningitis, enjoy a full recovery.

Instead, the family is left with grief and anger– at the man who allegedly killed their mother and what they say is the breakdown in the system that allowed it to happen.

Lola Jayne was another victim of Washington’s refusal to protect the American people from foreign criminals who enter through open borders.

It’s incredibly sad to see another innocent kid killed in a traffic crash caused by a drunk-driving illegal alien. Kelly Tracy, a percussionist in Gilbert’s Highland High School band, was on her way to a music event with her brother Matthew when she was killed in a head-on by Mexican Manuel Contreras-Galdean, according to police.

MESA, Ariz. (AP)  –  Mesa Police say an illegal immigrant who was driving impaired is responsible for a crash in Mesa that killed a 16-year-old girl who was on her way to a school parade in Gilbert.

32-year-old Manuel Contreras Galdean turned in front of a car carrying the girl and her 17-year-old brother Saturday morning, says Mesa Police Sgt. Ed Wessing.

According to Mesa Police,  the collision was head-on and caused massive head trauma and injuries to both legs of 16 year-old Kelly Tracy. Her brother Matthew Tracy, who was driving, suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
[16 Year-Old Girl Killed on Way to School Parade in Gilbert, Fox Phoenix KSAZ, Nov 16, 2008]

Additionally upsetting is how easily the perp scammed the police last year, convincing them that he was not illegal by his high quality forged documents: Suspect pleaded guilty to drunken driving in ‘07 [East Valley Tribune, Nov 17, 2008].

A man jailed on suspicion of killing a Highland High School band member in a crash Saturday gave Tempe police no reason to believe he was an illegal immigrant when he was stopped on suspicion of drunken driving almost two years ago.

Tempe police spokesman Sgt. Steve Carbajal said Monday that Manuel Contreras-Galdean gave officers who arrested him Jan. 27, 2007, a local address that matched the address for his car registration, and his Mexican driver’s license seemed to also be valid, all signs that he could be here legally.

Carbajal said officers run the risk of racial profiling if they begin inquiring about a person’s citizenship without a good reason.

Contreras, who police say was drunk and who was booked on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the crash that killed Kelly Tracy, 16, Saturday morning, was here illegally in 2007, according to court records.

There are two causes of the avoidable death of Kelly Tracy: first and foremost was the presence of a drunk-driving illegal alien who should have been in Mexico; the other was sloppy police work, apparently due to political correctness, when Tempe officers had him in custody. Most Americans would agree that public safety is more important than avoiding “profiling” drunk drivers.

I have criticized Mexican culture for its animal cruelty and extreme drinking (especially drunk driving). Both of these elements appear in this fascinating item from the La Plaza blog of the LA Times about a raucous celebration of bulls in a small Mexican town: Amateur bullfighting festival in Mexico ends with 23 injuries, August 25, 2008.

The Huamantlada, which is often compared to the running of the bulls event in Pamplona, takes place every year in this small rural town. The comparison to the event in Spain is inaccurate: the bulls didn’t run anywhere. The town’s 17 central streets were transformed into huge pens for the half-ton animals, which were mercilessly taunted by the crowd and pelted with plastic bottles and beer cans.

Many of the men who challenged the bulls, matador-style, knew what they were doing and approached the animals with caution and capes. But many didn’t. The combination of alcohol, a screaming crowd and poor judgment was too much: 23 people ended up being carried away on stretchers by the Red Cross.

Oh, well! At least nobody was killed during the festivities, unlike last year…

Not everybody was so cautious, but at least nobody lost their lives. Last year, there were 24 injuries and one death — Pimental saw the whole thing. The victim was an older man, and very drunk, she said. He didn’t want to sit with his family; he wanted to touch the bull.

“The animal took out his insides,” Pimental recalled.

Yep, too much drinking makes you stupid, a fact which has shown up in various Darwin Awards.

You can’t call it justice when a drunk-driving illegal alien gets a sentence of just 15 years for killing a teenager, Paul Watry of Port Washington, Wisconsin, who had his whole life ahead of him.

The killer, Eddie Carbajal-Lile, ran a stop sign after drinking and struck a car with three young people inside. He fled the scene and was caught two weeks later in Ohio after he was arrested for harassing a bartender.

Fifty friends and family of Paul Watry were present for the sentencing on Monday.

Larry Watry, 50, Watry’s father, told the judge the family would like an 18-year sentence, but also suggested that Carbajal-Lile should face 60 years behind bars, to match his son’s life expectancy.

“Today does nothing for us. We’ve lost our son, and nothing can change that, and nothing will erase the time we had together,” a tearful Watry told reporters after the hearing. “He was a remarkable young man.”

During the hearing, Watry spoke passionately about his son for about five minutes, and then played an emotional 10-minute video montage of Paul Watry’s life, with a portion of the musical backdrop performed by Paul, who owned eight guitars and headed a rock band called Ubiquitous Scab.
[Illegal immigrant gets 15 years for fatal hit-run, Fond du Lac Reporter, May 20 2008]

The video tribute to the dead young man is a moving reminder of the human cost of open borders.

There’s more tragic carnage to report, due to the nation’s open borders: a drunk-driving illegal alien living in Indiana, Mario Cardena, killed three Americans (and himself) in a horrific crash that left three twisted vehicles indicating the force of the impact.

MERRILLVILLE — Friends and family mourned the death of a prominent attorney, a young couple soon to be married and a Mexican immigrant who had long struggled with a drinking problem — all four of them killed in three-car collision Wednesday near the border of Merrillville and Winfield.

As Hough and Weiss pulled into the intersection of Randolph and 101st Avenue, Mario Cadena sped west, past a stop sign and into Hough’s Ford Explorer, driving the truck into Weiss’ Mustang. No one emerged alive from the twisted wreckage.

Merrillville police declined comment on the crash but said high speed was a factor. The Lake County coroner will not have results of blood toxicology reports for several days. Police sources say they believe Cadena had been drinking, and a beer bottle was on the front seat of his ruined Jeep Cherokee at the police impound yard.
[Speed, alcohol thought to be factors in fatal Merrillville crash, By Andy Grimm, Merrillville Post-Tribune, May 1, 2008]

Stephen Hough, 26, and Amy Bartelmey, 25, (shown above) had planned to be married after he graduated from Purdue with a degree in public relations. She had a two-year-old son from a previous relationship.

Another victim in a separate vehicle was a well known local attorney Garry Weiss, 53, who is survived by his wife Cindy and two teenage children: Speed, Alcohol Factors In Collision That Killed Four (WMAG-TV Chicago, May 1, 2008).

“He was the love of my life. Everybody loves him. He just … he was perfect. No, not always perfect, but a wonderful husband, wonderful father, wonderful lawyer, wonderful friend, son, brother … there’s not enough to be said about him,” his wife, Cindy Weiss, said. “I love him and I miss him.”

The killer is also dead, so there will be no trial and public examination of his previous arrests; he is another criminal foreigner who should have been punished at the time of earlier crimes and then deported, a basic execution of the law that would have saved his own and three other lives. He had previously been arrested for drunk driving, so this crime was not unforseeable: Driver in fatality had long history [Merrillville Post-Tribune, May 3, 2008].

Cadena was charged with driving without ever having been issued a license and driving while intoxicated after a 2001 arrest by Lake County Sheriff’s police.

A plea deal with prosecutors reduced the drunken driving charge to reckless driving, and Cadena was given a suspended jail sentence of 180 days and paid $480 in fees and fines.

In October 2003, Cadena was pulled over by State Police for unsafe lane movement and driving while intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level above 0.15 percent — nearly double the 0.08 percent required for a drunken driving charge. Cadena again reached a plea deal with prosecutors and received a suspended sentence of one year by Judge Julie Cantrell.

Cantrell also saw Cadena in court in June 2006, when he was charged with driving 77 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per hour zone, failure to register his vehicle and driving without a license.

It’s a story that is painfully similar to many others. Had Judge Cantrell and other local officials of the justice system not been unforgivably weak in dealing with an obviously dangerous illegal alien, this terrible crime could have been prevented.