Posted on 04/22/2008 4:26:48 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
The air bags from the van a woman is accused of crashing into a school bus killing four children will be tested for DNA to help establish who was driving.
Olga Franco, 24, appeared in court in Marshall, Minn. on Tuesday for a hearing to determine if Franco's statements to investigators should be thrown out, and at the same time revealed new information about the case.
Police say Franco was driving the van on Feb. 19 that hit a school bus in Cottonwood back in February. She is charged with criminal vehicular homicide after four students from the Lakeview School District who were on the bus were killed.
Franco claims her boyfriend was behind the wheel when the van ran a stop sign and hit the bus, but he took off before police arrived. During the hearing, her defense attorney was highly critical of investigators. He said they didn't read Franco her Miranda rights prior to one interview and they didn't collect enough evidence to show who was driving the van.
"The defense will be that she was not driving the van, and it gets down to that. And it's really not a difficult case," said Franco's attorney Manuel Guerrero. Guerrero said two days after the crash, Franco told authorities her boyfriend was driving but they never investigated it.
"I'm convinced that the boyfriend was in fact driving the van, and that he has absconded and can't be found," he said.
Franco will testify her boyfriend was thrown from the vehicle on impact and then he ran off. Immigration officials say the boyfriend is in the U.S. illegally. They searched for him in Willmar, in Texas and it's now believed he's in Mexico.
Minnesota State Patrol Officer Dana Larsen testified at a hearing on Tuesday that Franco was in the driver's seat when she was extracted from the vehicle after the crash. She broke her leg and firefighters had to extricate her.
However, Guerrero says there's an explanation: that in the crash, Franco was thrown to the driver's side.
"Since she didn't have any seatbelts and he didn't have any seatbelts on, that she was thrown over in that direction, and then she righted herself by grabbing the steering wheel and pulling herself up," he said. He also said Franco is suffering from depression.
"She deeply regrets that there was injury to other people, and she's expressed that sorrow to me. But she's also maintained that she wasn't driving the van," said Guerrero.
The $200,000 bail for Franco will stand, even thought her attorney argued that another judge did not consider all the facts in the case when he set the bail amount.
Lyon County Attorney Rick Maes countered that Franco had lied during the investigation, and is considered a flight risk.
Lyon County District Judge David Peterson denied the defense motion to reduce the bail amount and did not make a decision on throwing out Franco's statements to investigators.
Franco initially gave authorities an assumed name, but investigators figured it out and learned Franco was in the country illegally.
In court on Tuesday, it was also revealed that a 5-year-old boy saw a woman driving the van prior to the crash, but the child wasn't in court.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension will receive the air bags on Wednesday to do the DNA testing.
Video at link.
He also said Franco is suffering from depression.
“She deeply regrets that there was injury to other people, and she’s expressed that sorrow to me.
And I really could give a rat’s patotty about this illegal aliens ‘feelings’.
Yeah, I’m trying to muster up some tears for this gal. So far, no luck....
So her boyfriend, who fled the accident scene and the country, got thrown from the van, while she simultaneously got thrown from the passneger seat into the driver’s seat, breaking her legs and wedging her in tightly enough so she had to be extricated.
mmmmm...could happen.
Ain’t modern science great?!
This may condem her, or clear her, and that IS how it should be.
She has told one whopper after another....
If her DNA is NOT on the driver’s side airbag....I’ll eat this Toshiba laptop.
Jorge Bush must be very proud.
Yes. Modern science will back up the sworn testimony of several eye witnesses when this all goes to trial.
LOL Yeah....to Wiley Coyote.
I think it will too.
Is she an illegal or just the boyfriend?
As illegal as they get.
She was using an identity stolen from a Puerto Rican NY resident.
Took several days to unravel her identity, because she also lied about being from Mexico after they discovered that her identity was stolen.
She is really illegally here from rather farther south of the border than Mexico.
IIRC, she also didn't have a drivers license, though I could be mistaken about that.
there is no way she is lying, these are decent hard working people just in this country to make an honest living
Her mouthpiece: "Of course her DNA is on the driver's side airbag. Her blood tears, and saliva got on it when she was thrown over the center console and into the driver's seat, breaking her leg(s), drooling and crying. It does not prove that she was driving prior to the impact."
His DNA will be on the pax bag, though...
I once worked for a guy who did this kind of analysis, mostly for local governments and car makers who were being sued after car crashes. He had 40 or 50 employees -- engineers, cops, doctors & nurses, computer animation and graphics gurus, mechanics, lawyers, and more besides.
Very commonly, the case was like this:
It was pathetically easy to expose these thieving liars. The best part was when they were so foolish as to proceed to court. I loved seeing the lying plaintiff scum being made to look like monkeys on the stand, and the schadenfreude as the dirty filthy greedy scummy dung-beetle plaintiff's lawyers watched their contingency fee fly off into the sunset. God, did I ever love helping the boss take a big stinky crap right in their rice bowl.
I'd go back to that job in a moment. Few things in life offer the karmic satisfaction of making a dung-beetle plaintiff's attorney suffer.
-ccm
Magic bullet, magic underwear, spaceships, flying saucers. All things are possible.
But I don't think I'll buy it. :^)
Fine, she can cough up his name and village from Mexico or be charged as an accessory.
Then put out a 20,000 dollar bounty on his head dead or alive to be delivered to Laredo PD station or Border Patrol.
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