Illegal alien pleads guilty in DUI case that killed NFL linebacker
For anyone to be killed by a drunk driver in America is a tragedy.
For that drunk driver to be someone driving on American roads when they don’t have a legal right to be here just sets one’s blood boiling to hear of it.
But that’s exactly what happened on an Indiana road in February when Manuel Orrego-Zavala, drunk behind the wheel of his pickup truck, struck and killed Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson.
Even President Donald Trump felt the need to comment on the tragedy when it happened.
“So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson,” the president said via Twitter. “This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST! My prayers and best wishes are with the family of Edwin Jackson, a wonderful young man whose life was so senselessly taken.”
Orrego-Zavala pleaded guilty to two counts of “DUI that causes death of another.”
And while he may be in America illegally, the Guatemalan will be spending longer in the U.S. than he might think, as a guest of the prison system.
The Indianapolis Star reports Orrego-Zavala will be sentenced Sept. 14 in Marion County Superior Court. Under the charges to which he admitted wrongdoing, he faces up to 16 years in prison.
Orrego-Zavala has been given the boot from American soil before.
In 2007, and again in 2009, he was deported. But he apparently thought the third time was lucky because sometime around the middle of 2014 he carved out a life for himself in Indiana.
This isn’t the first time Orrego-Zavala has been busted for drunk driving either.
In 2005, he was arrested for DUI in California, circumstances which led to his first deportation.
And continuing to flout America’s rules of the road, he, under the alias Alex Cabrera-Gonzalez, was arrested in 2017 for driving without ever having received a license.
At the time, the sheriff’s office did not report the illegal alien’s status to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, something that would have led to Orrego-Zavala’s third deportation.
And in offering sanctuary to an illegal, a chain of events was set in motion that killed Jackson.
And as Jackson’s family gets a measure of justice for their fallen kinsman, all that remains is to wonder how the “abolish ICE” activists sleep at night when their agitating leads to situations like this.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
