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"hellno" <hellno@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9990411ea38682a55f4cf2f28086b243@localhost.talkaboutgovernment.com...
> Immigrant behind wheel in deadly crash sentenced to prison and deportation
>
> Not convicted in wreck: He was found guilty of illegally transporting
> other immigrants at the time
>
> By Pamela Manson
> The Salt Lake Tribune
>
>
> Travis Smith prepared carefully for his trip from his mother's home in
> Colorado to his father's place in Arizona.
>    He packed the night before he left and got up early so he could drive
> when there were fewer vehicles on the road. His cell phone was charged. He
> carried a card for roadside assistance and an emergency kit in his trunk.
> He was covered by a AAA plan purchased by his grandparents.
>    But all his caution couldn't stop another driver from falling asleep at
> the wheel and crashing head-on into Smith's 1966 Mustang outside
Monticello
> on June 16, 2002. The 19-year-old college student, as well as a woman in
> the other motorist's vehicle, were killed in the collision.
>    On Wednesday, the other driver, Isidro Aranda-Flores, was sentenced to
> about 6 1/2 years in prison, but not for the deaths. U.S. District Judge
> David Sam in Salt Lake City imposed the term on the 24-year-old Mexican
> national for transporting relatives who were undocumented immigrants.
> Aranda-Flores, who also is an undocumented immigrant, will be deported
> after he serves his sentence.
>    The crash was considered an accident because Aranda-Flores, who had
> been driving about 8 1/2 hours, had not been drinking or speeding. He had
> four passengers in his van, all of them his in-laws whom he was driving
> from Arizona back to their home in Ohio, after they had attended a family
> funeral in Mexico. The other victim was 62-year-old Bernarda Gordilla.
>    However, the two deaths did bump up the sentence from the maximum of 2
> 1/2 years that would have been imposed had there been no fatalities.
>    Authorities probably would not have filed criminal charges if all the
> van's occupants had been U.S. citizens. The U.S. Attorney's Office,
> however, prosecuted Aranda-Flores for violating immigration law and pushed
> for a tougher sentence based on the fatalities.
>    Sam, who described the case as heart-wrenching, said, "There's no
> sentence that I can impose that would be adequate to compensate for the
> loss of lives."
>    Smith's mother said her son's death has been devastating.
>    "He did everything right," a sobbing Tanya Lowe told Sam as she
> described Travis' preparations for his drive from Montrose to the Phoenix
> area, where he attended Mesa Community College. "My son was not in the
> wrong place at the wrong time. [Aranda-Flores] was."
>    Lowe said her son was an honor student who played high-school football
> and stayed sober at parties to ensure his friends never drove after
> drinking. Her youngest son, Travis' brother, broke the news of the crash
> to her.
>    "Every day is as hard as the first day," Lowe said.
>    Stepmother Elaine Smith said Travis was "a young man taking his first
> step."
>    "There are no words to describe the emptiness that never goes away,"
> she said. "Travis deserved better. Travis was headed for something
> better."
>    Her husband, Wayne Smith, was too upset to speak at the sentencing
> hearing. But outside court, he said that the law should be altered so that
> being in the United States illegally would warrant harsher sentencing,
just
> as recklessness and intoxication do, in traffic-accident cases.
>    pmanson@sltrib.com

Hank

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