Where's MADD, SADD....???

--
Keith

Harvest of death on the Eastern Shore
The Virginian-Pilot
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/print.cfm?story=93408&ran=120909

Rogue vehicles driven by unlicensed drivers have been responsible for
a string of deadly accidents on the Eastern Shore. Two people were
killed and two injured when this Ford Escort driven by a Hispanic farm
worker ran a stop sign Oct. 1 in Accomack County. virginia state
police photos

ACCIDENT TIMELINE:

The 13 fatal accidents involving Hispanic workers on the Eastern Shore
since 2002 have killed 18 people. In all but two incidents, the car
that caused the accident had out-of-state plates.

Aug. 19, 2002

U.S. 13: Intoxicated migrant worker hit and killed while walking
illegally on U.S. 13 at night. Plates: South Carolina.

Aug. 29, 2002

Va. 178: Car runs off road and strikes trees and pole, killing three.
Plates: Tennessee.

Nov. 4, 2002

Va. 609: Driver killed when he runs into ditch, loses control and car
overturns. Plates: Tennessee.

Feb. 3, 2003

Va. 187: Head-on collision kills two when driver blacks out and
crosses median. Plates: Virginia.

July 24, 2003

Va. 609: Driver killed when vehicle runs off road and overturns.
Plates: Florida.

Aug. 31, 2003

U.S. 13: Car with three occupants overturns, killing one; driver
flees. Plates: Virginia.

Oct. 9, 2003

U.S. 13 (Business): Driver killed when he loses control of car,
strikes tree then utility pole. Plates: Tennessee.

Nov. 2, 2003

U.S. 13: Driver killed when car runs off road at high speed and flips
end-over-end five times. Plates: Tennessee.

Dec. 20, 2003

U.S. 13: Head-on collision involving two cars with migrant workers;
driver of one dies the next day in Charlotte, N.C. Plates: North
Carolina.

Dec. 24, 2003

U.S. 13: A head-on collision killed Debbie Thomas, above, a mother of
three. Plates: Tennessee.

May 10, 2004

U.S. 13: Driver and passenger killed when they are thrown from one car
and struck by two others. Plates: Texas.

July 22, 2004

U.S. 13: Driver killed when he loses control of vehicle and it
overturns. Plates: Florida.

Oct. 1, 2005

Intersection of Va. 180 and Va. 600: Driver and child passenger killed
when car runs stop sign and is broadsided by a pickup. Plates:
Michigan.

The Ford Escort was racing north on rural Seaside Road, its occupants
headed home from a wedding, when it ran a stop sign at 55 mph.

The driver of a Ford F-150 traveling east through the intersection
never saw the Escort, police said.

The T-bone crash killed the driver of the Escort, Rene Leyva-Perez,
and 4-year-old Daniel Salazar, who was in the back seat. Daniel’s
pregnant mother, Marina Salazar, and the driver of the pickup were
injured.

When police arrived, they discovered that Leyva-Perez had no auto
insurance or driver’s license – only a laminated ID card issued by the
tomato-packing plant where he worked – and that the car was registered
to a woman in Chesapeake and had Michigan plates.

In the Escort’s wreckage, they found empty cans of Modelo Especial –
acclaimed in Mexico as “the elite of beers.”

That violent collision nine days ago, on an unlit stretch of Accomack
County blacktop, is the latest example of a deadly trend:

Since 2002, more than 90 people have been injured and 18 killed on the
Eastern Shore in accidents involving Hispanic workers driving rogue
vehicles.

The fatalities represent about one-fourth of the 71 highway deaths on
the Eastern Shore in that period, even though the year-round Hispanic
population makes up only 5 percent of the region’s 51,000 residents.
Those numbers swell during tomato-picking season, from July through
early November, when most of the fatalities occurred.

Accidents like the one on Oct. 1 have helped make the 77-mile stretch
of U.S. 13 from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to the Maryland state
line one of the most treacherous highways in Virginia. In 2003, the
fatality rate – deaths per miles driven – on that span of U.S. 13 was
more than four times the rates on Interstates 64, 81 and 95 in
Virginia.

In all but three of the fatal accidents in which Hispanics were at the
wheel, the drivers had no insurance. In most cases, the vehicles had
no inspection stickers, the drivers carried no license and alcohol was
a factor. The vast majority of the victims in the fatalities were
Hispanic.

A review of State Police auto accident reports for 2002 through 2004
on the Eastern Shore also revealed that of the 179 accidents involving
Hispanic laborers:

nThree-fourths of the drivers had no auto insurance – more than four
times the national rate for uninsured motorists.

nNearly all of the vehicles driven by migrants and other laborers were
registered to other drivers.

n Ninety-three percent of the vehicles had out-of-state tags – most of
them from Tennessee.

nThe number of injuries per accident was about 50 percent higher than
the statewide average.

The troopers patrolling U.S. 13, a busy artery connecting Hampton
Roads to the populous Northeast, are frustrated by the pattern of
lawlessness and mayhem.

Only 10 troopers are assigned to the highways that crisscross the
Eastern Shore’s 263 square miles – and on some shifts there is only
one trooper on duty for each of the Shore’s two counties. First Sgt.
J.P. Koushel, who oversees the Shore’s troopers, said his unit is
“tremendously understaffed” and that he has requested additional
manpower.

“Right now we’re just running from call to call,” Koushel said. “We
can’t even be pro active anymore.”

Koushel said most of the vehicles involved in accidents that kill and
injure fail to meet Virginia highway safety standards. He called it “a
mockery” of the state’s vehicle registration law.

Tennessee plates

The state of Tennessee appears to be an enabler for many of the
illegal drivers.

Up and down the Eastern Shore, in the work camps and housing complexes
where migrants and year-round laborers live, Tennessee plates abound.
Eastern Shore law enforcers suspect there is a flourishing black
market for Tennessee tags.

There has been speculation of a mail-order operation, but postmasters
say they cannot discuss the nature of their mail. Officials for the
State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation would not say if they
are looking into the Tennessee tag issue.

Tennessee’s titling and registration regulations are among the most
lax in the nation. Several migrants interviewed recently said they got
Tennessee tags because they were turned down by Virginia’s Department
of Motor Vehicles.

Tennessee does not require identification or proof of insurance when a
vehicle is titled and plates are issued, as long as the motorist pays
cash. Most states require identification or proof of insurance;
Virginia requires both.

Tennessee state Sen. Bill Ketron said his state’s legislature has
failed to close the loophole because of pressure from the powerful
auto insurance industry, which he says “wants to be able to
cherry-pick who they sell to,” rather than being forced to insure
high-risk drivers. He plans to introduce a bill during the next
legislative session, which begins in January, that would toughen
titling and registration requirements.

The problem also has come to the attention of Virginia’s Migrant and
Seasonal Farm Workers Advisory Board. The Tennessee license plate
matter is “a political hot potato,” said Kenneth E. Annis of Exmore,
chairman of the 15-member board.

Annis promised that it will be addressed at the board’s next meeting.
The board, which meets four times a year, can recommend changes to the
governor or the General Assembly.

Other regions with significant Hispanic populations, such as
Rockingham County in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and the
Greensboro/Winston-Salem area of North Carolina, have not seen
significant numbers of cars with Tennessee tags, say law enforcement
officials there.

But on the Eastern Shore, “Somebody is making it very easy for these
drivers to get Tennessee tags,” Annis said. “It’s all very fishy.”

And deadly. In the 13 fatal accidents since 2002 involving Hispanic
workers, six vehicles bore Tennessee tags.

Many of the Tennessee plates on the Shore were issued in Union County,
in the eastern part of the state near the Virginia border – about a
nine-hour drive from the Shore.

Jim Houston, county clerk for Union County, said Tennessee officials
are aware of the problem. Houston said his office sees “quite a few”
Hispanics registering vehicles, “and I think the number’s increasing.”

When the topic of migrants titling vehicles came up at a recent
meeting of Tennessee clerks, Houston said, “One of the other clerks
said, 'Lord, we’re overrun with them.’”

Migrant population swells

Each year, tomato pickers follow the jobs north from Florida and
Georgia to Virginia’s Eastern Shore by the thousands.

In July, the Hispanic population on the Shore swells from fewer than
3,000 – those who live there year-round – to about 7,000. The seasonal
migrants stay until late October, sometimes into November, then head
south.

In recent years, more workers have stuck around when the growing
season ended. The number of Eastern Shore laborers who stayed behind
and became full-time residents jumped from 177 in 1980 to 2,516 in
2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

With its long growing season, the Shore has become one of the nation’s
garden spots for tomatoes, which are now its biggest cash crop.
Virginia ranks third in the nation in tomato production, behind
Florida and California. Virginia’s annual crop is valued at $60
million – 95 percent of it grown on the Shore.

Tomatoes must be picked by hand, a labor-intensive and often
sweltering task. The migrants from Mexico and Central America bring a
willingness and the skills that local laborers generally lack, said
Jim Belote, agricultural extension agent for Accomack County.

“These guys are incredible athletes,” he said. “You’ll see one worker
toss a basket of tomatoes to a guy on a truck like a football player
completing a pass, and then the first guy is filling another basket.

“They’re also very conscientious. They live in what we would consider
impoverished conditions so they can send most of their salary to
relatives back home.”

Migrants are indispensable to the large commercial tomato growers that
dominate the industry on the Shore. Jay Taylor, president of
Florida-based Taylor & Fulton Inc., one of the Eastern Shore’s largest
growers, said his company hires between 650 and 750 migrants to pick
tomatoes and 150 more to package them during the height of the season
at its Mappsville operation.

Jim Albright, who ministers to migrants on the Eastern Shore for the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond, said most Hispanics on the Shore
are law-abiding and hard working. Some are professionals, and there
are two Hispanic doctors, he said.

Albright said migrants have been victimized by fly-by-night
entrepreneurs who promise to get them immigration documents, then
disappear with their cash. He said he knows it is difficult for many
migrants to obtain driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, which
can lead them to seek Tennessee tags.

Most of the laborers live in Accomack County housing complexes, motels
and mobile home parks, some in squalid conditions. Two of the largest
trailer parks are named Dreamland 1 and Dreamland 2.

One laborer, a resident of Dreamland 1 and a Mexican immigrant, said
weekend parties are a way of letting off steam after a hot week in the
fields.

In 2003 and 2004, 128 of the 395 people arrested on DUI charges on the
Shore – 32.4 percent – were Hispanic. Steve Hearn, who heads the
Shore’s Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program, said the courts are
sending increasing numbers of Hispanics through the program, and he
has begun conducting classes in Spanish on videotape and using a
Spanish-speaking interpreter for alcohol-awareness sessions.

The carnage

The mix of alcohol, unsafe vehicles and inexperienced drivers has bred
carnage along the back roads that connect farm fields to the hamlets
on the Shore. Those roads eventually lead to U.S. 13, which bisects
the long, narrow peninsula.

When crashes occur, it is not uncommon for Hispanic drivers – often
intoxicated and unlicensed – to flee before troopers arrive. According
to State Police records, about a third of accidents involving migrant
workers are hit-and-run.

That’s what happened on Aug. 29, 2002. The driver of a 1990 Dodge van
apparently lost control on Va. 178 near Belle Haven. The van veered
off the road and struck several trees, then a utility pole.

There were seven people in the van, and three of them – all migrant
laborers – died. Two passengers fled before police arrived. The car
was registered to Guadalupe Ramirez in Unicoi County, Tenn.

Many accidents leave a curious paper trail. On Nov. 4, 2002, a 1986
Nissan Sentra overturned on Va. 609 in Accomack County, killing the
driver, Jesus Antonio Lopez.

Lopez was intoxicated, according to police. The car he was driving
bore Tennessee plates and was registered to Michael Jones of 620
Pinewood Drive in Virginia Beach.

Jones, contacted recently in Virginia Beach, said he owned an ’86
Sentra when he lived at that address but that he had since moved and
given the car to a friend in Northampton County. Jones said the friend
later sold the car.

Told that the car had been registered in his name in Tennessee, Jones
speculated that someone had found papers with his personal information
in the car and used them to get the Tennessee tags.

“It’s kind of scary to think that can happen,” he said.

A collision on Dec. 20, 2003, involved all of the volatile
ingredients: two cars carrying laborers, each bearing out-of-state
tags, crashed head-on. Investigators said both drivers had been
drinking.

Victor Herrera Munoz, a poultry worker, was headed south on U.S. 13 in
a 1985 Chevrolet Camaro with North Carolina plates when he lost
control, crossed the median and struck an oncoming Ford Escort,
according to a police report.

When officers arrived, no one was in the driver’s seat of the badly
crumpled Escort, which had Tennessee plates. An ambulance transported
Munoz to a hospital in Salisbury, Md.

A few days later, police discovered what happened to the driver of the
Escort, Israel Gomez Sanchez. Friends of Gomez Sanchez following in
another car had pulled him from the wreckage, placed him in their car
and set out on an eight-hour drive to Charlotte, N.C., where Gomez
Sanchez had relatives.

There, the injured man’s family called an ambulance. According to the
medical examiner’s report, Gomez Sanchez died at a Charlotte hospital,
nearly 14 hours after the accident.

Accomack County prosecutors initially planned to charge Munoz with
manslaughter, but decided it would be difficult to convict him because
Gomez Sanchez may have lived had he received prompt medical attention.

State Trooper Koushel said migrants often cannot be conclusively
identified when they’re stopped for a violation or involved in an
accident. Many, he said, are illegal aliens who carry fake or invalid
driver’s licenses. Because of that, he said, many fail to show up in
court.

“It’s almost like writing a ticket to a ghost,” Koushel said.

Sometimes when there’s an accident involving a fatality or serious
injury, “we don’t even know what embassy to contact,” he said.

It’s three months into the harvest season, and State Police recently
have seen the effects of the migrant influx. So has Sentara Norfolk
General’s air ambulance, the Nightingale.

The helicopter regularly flies to the Eastern Shore to ferry badly
injured accident survivors to the Norfolk hospital. On the evening of
Sept. 17, the Nightingale made two trips to the Shore to retrieve
victims from accidents on U.S. 13.

In the first crash, a man suffered a broken neck when the Hyundai he
was riding in pulled out into the path of a State Police special
investigator. The Hyundai’s driver, a Hispanic worker, had a
blood-alcohol content more than double the legal limit for driving.

In the second accident, a migrant worker was seriously hurt while
walking intoxicated along U.S. 13 just one mile from the earlier
accident. The van that struck him stopped, and the driver stepped out
briefly before speeding off. Witnesses identified the driver as
Hispanic.

Two weeks later, the Nightingale was again summoned to the Eastern
Shore, to pick up pregnant Marina Salazar, injured in the crash on
Seaside Road.

On patrol

Along desolate County Road near Parksley, state Trooper Casey Lewis
watched a Toyota Camry pull compliantly off the road at dusk. The
car’s left tail light was burned out. The license plate would have led
a casual observer to conclude that the driver was from Tennessee, but
Lewis knew better.

“I’ve gotten this guy before,” she said, grabbing a long black
flashlight, securing a trooper’s hat over her hair and stepping out of
the patrol car.

The Camry’s driver accompanied Lewis back to her cruiser and pulled
out his wallet. It contained a North Carolina ID card that said he was
Jose Luis Montes, a field worker from Mexico. But he had no driver’s
license.

On the floor of the passenger’s side of the Camry sat a brown paper
bag containing a six-pack of beer bottles. Five were empty.

It was not Montes’ lucky night. He was only about 200 feet from the
entrance to Dreamland 2, where he lives. Lewis cited him for driving
without an operator’s permit, an open-container violation and driving
with defective equipment.

A few minutes later, Parksley Police Chief Tommy Carpenter pulled up
and removed the Tennessee plates with a power screwdriver.

“We’ll take them back and destroy them,” Lewis said. “That way they
won’t get recycled on the Shore.”

Later that evening, Lewis was one of more than a half-dozen officers
who set up a DUI checkpoint in front of a funeral home on Parksley
Road, a two-lane stretch of rural blacktop. State Police operate
checkpoints once or twice a month. This time, in order to muster
enough manpower, they had to recruit local sheriff’s deputies.

From midnight to just before 4 a.m., the officers stopped cars, vans
and pickups in the sulfurous haze of orange roadside flares, waving
suspected violators into the funeral home parking lot. It was a busy
night. At one point, eight vehicles were parked at odd angles as
officers interviewed their drivers.

At 12:23 a.m., an officer flagged a Nissan pickup with Alabama tags
and a black crouching tiger painted on the driver’s-side door. Two
Hispanic men wearing white T-shirts got out. The driver had no license
or ID.

The men became agitated as they milled around. When a tow truck
arrived to haul away the pickup, one of the men began shouting
“Discrimination! Discrimination!”

As the wrecker pulled away with the pickup aboard, one man flung
himself on the flatbed tow truck and tried to roll under his
confiscated pickup.

The ruse didn’t work.

“Come on down off there, amigo,” one of the officers ordered.

There was little rest on this night for Randy Miller, owner of Randy’s
Service Center in Parksley. He drives a red tow truck with “23½ HOUR
SERVICE” emblazoned on the driver’s door.

“The half-hour is when I sleep,” Miller deadpanned as he loaded up for
his fifth trip of the night.

Miller said he maintains a small used-car lot made up mostly of aging
vehicles that were never claimed for the $125 towing fee. They often
are sold to other farm laborers, police said, thus making their way
back onto the highways – many of them sporting Tennessee plates.

The fallout

Every fatality leaves people dealing with its aftermath. Georgie Smith
is one of them.

When her daughter, Debbie Thomas, was killed in a Christmas Eve 2003
accident on U.S. 13, Smith was left to raise three grandchildren. Six
generations now live in the same two-story house in Painter.

That Christmas, Smith recalls, people came by the house not to
celebrate the holiday but to offer condolences. Her grandchildren
received the gifts from their mom unwrapped, in a cardboard box.

Thomas had been on her way home that night to wrap the presents. She
was less than a mile from her house in Nelsonia when her Nissan Sentra
was hit head-on by a Geo Storm with Tennessee plates traveling the
wrong way.

The impact tore the shoes from Thomas’ feet. She later died at the
hospital. Her daughter, Marquita, suffered only minor injuries –
thanks to a last-second maneuver by Thomas. State Police said she
turned the wheel to the right just before impact, taking the brunt of
the collision on the driver’s side and probably saving Marquita’s
life.

The driver of the other car, Narciso Garcia-Jimenez, was seriously
hurt. He was air-lifted unconscious to Sentara Norfolk General, where
State Police told hospital officials that they planned to obtain a
warrant, charging him with manslaughter.

But later, when a nurse went to Garcia-Jimenez’s room, the bed was
empty – except for a dangling intravenous line. He remains a fugitive.

Garcia-Jimenez worked at one of the sprawling poultry plants in
Accomack County. The Geo Storm he was driving was uninsured, had no
inspection sticker and was registered to another person at P.O. Box
87, Newport, Tenn. – an address that frequently shows up on
registration papers carried by migrants, State Police said.

Smith thought the driver of the car that struck her daughter’s had
been killed in the crash. When told he had survived and had never been
arrested, Smith said she felt “angry, bitter and sad, all at once.”

Angry, but not surprised. Not long ago, a man crashed a car near the
family home on narrow, poorly lit Shell Bridge Road.

When police arrived, they found the car smashed against a tree. The
driver was gone. So were the license plates.

-------------------------------------

Fed up with illegal immigration?
_____

Forums to discuss news items of illegal immigration:

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/listarticles.cgi?117
http://www.saveourstate.org

http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/index.php

Indexes breaking news of illegal immigration:

http://idexer.com

Other important links:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frostyA.htm
http://www.rescuewithoutborders.org/index.html
http://www.americanpatrol.com/LINKS/LINKS.html
http://www.vdare.com/links.htm
http://fairus.org/
http://numbersusa.com/index

_____

"Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death
of a sparrow in the corner of a barn." -Anouk Aimee, French Actor  
_____

"Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny", Aeschylus (525BC-456BC),
Agamemnon
_____

"I wear no Burka." - Mother Nature
   
----------
To send mail: remove hutch