The illegal alien drunk driver who struck and killed a police officer in Houston had not only been twice deported but also twice released from police custody after he was apprehended.
Local news media have uncovered a wealth of details about Johoan Rodriguez, who killed 28-year-old cop Kevin Will. The 26-year-old Mexican illegal killed Will after he crashed a police barrier set up to cordon off an area where Will was investigating an accident. The Mexican vagabond was drunk and carrying cocaine in his pocket when his car struck the officer.
Will is just the latest victim of the federal government’s refusal to close the borders to the illegals who cross with impunity.
The Wreck
According to the Houston Chronicle, Rodriguez was nearly incoherent, such was the level of alcohol coursing through his veins. His blood tested at .238, three times the legal limit, the paper reported, and police found a small bag of cocaine in his pocket when they collared him.
But even worse, he had been deported twice and police let him go when they had the future vehicular killer in custody, the paper and a local television station reported.
According to the Chronicle, “Rodriguez is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was deported in 2005 and 2006.” It continued:
Federal court records show that Rodriguez tried to enter the U.S. through the Brownsville [Texas] Port of Entry by falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen on Dec. 29, 2005. Just days after he was deported back to Mexico, he tried again to get in, this time through the Hidalgo Port of Entry, records show. He again claimed to be a U.S. citizen, born in Houston, and showed a Texas driver’s license to support his claim, according to records. He was deported a second time.
Tela Mange, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman, confirmed that Rodriguez was issued a driver’s license in 2007. The license is still valid, she said. In 2008, DPS started requiring driver’s license applicants to show proof of citizenship or legal status.
Even worse, however, was his record of contact with police throughout the last decade. He racked up five misdemeanors, “including driving without insurance and with an expired license plate,” the paper reported.
But, because the authorities didn’t keep him in custody and boot him back south of the border, Kevin Will is dead. He leaves behind a pregnant widow and two stepchildren.
Will the Most Recent Victim
But Will is only the most recent victim of a drunken illegal, as television station station KTRK reported. “Two of the last six Houston police officers killed in the line of duty died at the hands of an accused drunk driver who was in this country illegally,” the station reported. One of them was Officer Gary Gryder, killed when he, like Will, was behind a police barrier and a drunken illegal crashed through and struck him.
And, as the Chronicle notes, some of those illegals aren’t mere drunks. Some are murderers. In September, 2006, when Officer Rodney Johnson arrested an illegal alien after he could not produce a driver’s license during a traffic stop, the illegal, though handcuffed in the back seat of Johnson’s patrol car, wriggled his hands to his front, pulled a concealed gun, and shot Johnson four times in the back of the head.
A border-jumping Salvadoran shot Officer Rick Salter in the face and killed him in March 2009, and another illegal, this one a Mexican, murdered Officer Henry Canales in June of that year.
Unsurprisingly, Houston is a de-facto sanctuary city that protects illegals from federal immigration authorities seeking to deport them. Houston police have flatly condemned the policy, citing the risk to their officers’ safety.
Different State, Same Problem
Meanwhile, in Providence, R.I., a federal judge handed an illegal alien a shortened sentence after a lachrymose plea from the convict about his tough life. This one, too, has a lengthy criminal record. The authorities have deported him once.
According to the Providence Journal, Robert M. Cordero-Luciano was nabbed trying to obtain a fraudulent driver’s license using a phony license from Puerto Rico. As well, he had four licenses from Massachusetts with four different names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers, the paper reported. The prosecutor revealed just what a criminal Cordero-Luciano is:
At the sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gerald Sullivan argued that Cordero-Luciano deserved the 46-month sentence because he had committed identity fraud in attempting to obtain the Rhode Island driver[‘s] license. He also alluded to his two drug convictions — in May and December 2005 — in Massachusetts.
The second conviction landed him an 18-month sentence and his deportation to the Dominican Republic.
No matter, Judge Mary Lisi listened to the Dominican’s tearful story. When she asked him why he returned to the United States, “he told her that he was trying to get a better-paying job to provide for his wife and daughter. He said that he had problems paying his mortgage and the financial tailspin worsened after his cousin, a lieutenant colonel in the Santo Domingo Police Department, was killed.”
Said Cordero-Luciano: “If I get 24 months, I promise in the name of God and my daughter … that I will never return to the United States. I tried to make good. I behaved in jail. I’ve been thinking about my daughter.”
The judge believed him. “You got a break today,” Lisi told him, according to the paper. “But, it’s the last one you’re going to get.”
