Posted on 06/14/2011 12:03:37 PM PDT by moonshinner_09
A woman accused of leaving the scene of a traffic accident last month where an investigating Houston police officer was later killed has been charged with two felonies and is believed to have fled again — this time, to Mexico.
Houston police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Francisca Cortez, 28. Authorities said they believe she is the driver who struck two motorcyclists on Interstate 610 near Yale on May 29. While investigating that wreck, Officer Kevin Will was fatally struck by a suspected drunken driver.
In a probable cause affidavit filed Friday in Harris County, police revealed that Cortez's relatives have said she is in Mexico with her children. Court records also detail an effort in the hours after her crash to mislead authorities about her whereabouts and the location of her white Chevrolet Suburban during the time of the accident.
Motorcyclists dragged Cortez is charged with two counts of failure to stop and render aid in an accident resulting in serious bodily injury. The wreck happened just as Luis Almendarez and Tracey Alexander entered the freeway on their bikes headed east around 2 a.m. After the men were hit from behind and thrown from their motorcycles, the SUV motorist "continued to drive, dragging the motorcycles approximately 1,000 feet before the vehicle came to rest on the shoulder of I-610," the complaint said.
On Monday, Almendarez was in fair condition at Ben Taub General Hospital, an upgrade from graver earlier reports that he was on life support. Alexander suffered from road rash, bruises and cuts.
Court documents allege that after hitting the bikers, the SUV driver got out and attempted to pull the motorcycles from under her vehicle, but got back in the Suburban and left the scene without giving any information.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
In other Mexico related news- Mexican official says truck deal nearly ready Some tariffs on U.S. products would be halted
Mexican Economy Minister Bruno Ferrari said his country will sign a formal agreement to end a trucking dispute with the U.S. as early as this month, setting the stage for the country to remove punitive tariffs.
The agreement ends a ban on Mexican trucks crossing the border, a move Mexico's government has said will trigger the removal of some tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. products.
"We're as close as you can be," Ferrari said.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7609184.html?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:7f7073a5-4b5c-4c60-985c-ce4e9b34c3fd
How do Mexicans learn to drive? Do they have driving schools in places like Zacatecas and Chiapas?
It is astounding to me to see the Houston Chief of Police, a Department whose last five Officers lost in the line of duty were killed by illegals, whining to the Legislature that enforcing the new immigration status checks would be an undue burden. I know he’s instructed to do so, but he should have told our awful Mayor to stuff it.
Let the ‘rats support the illegals. Hang it about their necks. Don’t let the public forget who supports this insanity, and who wants to put a stop to it. Opposition to illegal immigration is a strength, not the weakness our spineless politicians think it is.
>>where an investigating Houston police officer was later killed<<
That’s sensationalizing. It has nothing to do with her and what she did.
Another illegal...causing the accidents/injuries/deaths Americans don’t want to.
In high school I knew a kid who had a Juarez drivers licence (recognized as legal a certain number of miles into our side of the border) at the age of 15. He told me that he never had to take a test of any kind and that he just paid a bureacrat 50 bucks and picked up his license.
On a side note, he had been driving unlicensed in mexico since he was 13. Don’t know what it is like now but back then if you were pulled over you were just going to pay the cop a bribe, license or no.
the officer’s death while investigating the scene is a point of fact. No where does it say she was charged in his death,
Ping!
>>the officer’s death while investigating the scene is a point of fact.<<
With that I agree. However, it is not germane to her or her flight out of the country. It is something that happened after the fact that is not related to the story. It’s just interesting so they throw it in.
her flight out of the country would be no story if it weren’t for the related facts
>>her flight out of the country would be no story if it weren’t for the related facts<<
Yes. That would be the guys she ran down.
in relating the story, there would be no reason to omit the fact that the cop investigating the accident was run over and killed at the scene. Out of the whole sequence of events, that’s probably the single most significant one in as far as he was killed. She runs over motorcyclist, she leaves scene of serious injury accident, cop comes to scene, he is killed by another dui, she flees country, authorities file charges against her. why leave the cop killed segment out?
Keep in mind that if she had not hit the bikers, the dead officer would not have been there to be killed by the OTHER guy. So it all comes back to her wrongful actions.
Hope you are joking.
>>Hope you are joking.<<
The man was hit by a drunk driver while doing his job. It is not about her. It is a completely separate story.
>>Keep in mind that if she had not hit the bikers, the dead officer would not have been there to be killed by the OTHER guy. So it all comes back to her wrongful actions.<<
I disagree. If I am pulled over by a cop and while sitting in his car writing my ticket his car is rear-ended and he is killed, I am not responsible for that. The person that hit him is.
Now, if he was killed while chasing me in his cruiser, that would be different.
Disagree all you want... it won’t change the basic fact that her hit & run is why the officer was there and out of his vehicle. SHE was the proximate cause of his presence, thus of his death. Whether she’s LEGALLY LIABLE or not, I can’t say, but morally, it’s without question in my mind. Of ccourse the DRUNK AND ILLEGAL mexican has his own liability to deal with, but here we have a two-fer. Illegals who hit and run and who drive drunk and kill folks. Oughtta be a double hanging, far as I can see!
>>SHE was the proximate cause of his presence, thus of his death<<
Have you ever had something really bad happen in your life and think, if only I had not decided to go to work that day, I wouldn’t have been broadsided by the guy that ran the red light?
In that case, as much as you want to blame your job, or the route you took, or the timing and if only you had done something differently. But it was none of those things. It was the guy running the red light.
Likewise with this cop. If he was killed in a chase of this woman, she would be the cause. But he wasn’t. He was investigating an accident scene and killed by a drunk driver. Now, one may try to make the case that it was partially his fault for accidentally walking into traffic, or the barriers were not set up correctly, but what we KNOW is that the drunk driver hit him.
And the key here is that he was simply doing his job. Again, blaming her for his death would be equivalent to blaming her for his death because he was struck by a car while giving her a ticket for having a burned out license plate light. Sure, her action was the “cause” of him being there, but she is still not responsible for that particular mishap.
She is responsible for the ticket, of course, just as the woman in this story is responsible for the condition of the two motorcyclists and their bikes.
>>Of ccourse the DRUNK AND ILLEGAL mexican has his own liability to deal with, but here we have a two-fer.<<
This may be our disconnect right here. In my job it is imperative to avoid “scope creep”. I am more effective at it because I am a black and white thinker. That brings its own problems, but for things like this it is an advantage.
This issue is very black and white: the woman hit a couple of guys on motorcycles. That brings with it certain consequences. If one of the investigating officers, on his way to the scene, gets killed in an accident, the woman that hit the motorcyclists is not legally, ethically or morally culpable for his death. It is a separate incident.
Now, if the officer (or anyone else) was killed in an accident while chasing her, and any traffic laws are being violated by her AT THE TIME, then she would be, at the very least, morally responsible. Her action was at least partially a direct cause of the accident.
The police officer was simply doing his job, as a road worker might have been - and he was struck by a drunk driver. The mexican woman is no more relevant to that than the highway construction company would be if one of its highway workers was struck by a drunk driver - unless it could be proven that they had set up an unsafe work environment for the worker.
Do you see where I am going here? The woman’s flight is a story. Her hitting the bikes is a story. The officers death is a story. They are connected similar to how events are connected in the movie “Crash”, but she bears no moral or legal responsibility for the officer’s death.
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