“He received 10 years of probation and orders to go to a rehab center”, NBC reports.
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Tarrant County officials said Tuesday that “affluenza” fugitive Ethan Couch and his mother Tonya had a going away party before fleeing to Mexico, and an arrest warrant has now been issued for Tonya Couch.
A Mexican immigration official told The Associated Press the two will return to the U.S. Wednesday. It isn’t known exactly when the pair will be transported back to North Texas, but when it happens officials here say they know what to do with the pair.
Ethan Couch, 18, and his mother, Tonya Couch, were taken into custody on Monday evening in the Pacific resort of Puerto Vallarta, the Jalisco State Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
A Texas district attorney’s office said Monday, Dec. 28, 2015, that Mexican authorities have detained Couch, who disappeared with his mother after video surfaced online showing he may have violated his probation for causing a drunken wreck that killed four people.
“I would like for him to be held accountable as I’ve said all along”, Anderson said.
Mexico’s Jalisco state prosecutors’ office said its agents had been working with American authorities since December 26 to track down and capture Couch and his mother. “This is what they have requested”, Ricardo Vera said.
Couch and his mom had something akin to a going away party before they fled, Anderson said at a news conference Tuesday morning. Couch could be held in a juvenile facility until April if his probation is revoked, not 10 years in prison.
But officials are facing many complications with Couch’s case because he is an adult who is being overseen by the juvenile system. The juvenile judge’s sentence infuriated the public as well as the county investigators who handled the case.
But the district attorney hopes to transfer his case to adult court, which could land him additional jail time.
“In our state – in juvenile court – the standard is what is in the best interest of the child”, Wilson said. The Texas judge appeared to buy that argument at least somewhat, and sentenced him to ten years of probation rather than hard time.
Despite demands for a recall, Judge Jean Boyd retired shortly after handing down Ethan’s sentence.
“I can’t think of a worse attempt to evade punishment”, he said.
Sam Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, told The Washington Post that the office had filed a motion in November to have Couch’s case moved from juvenile court to adult court when he turns 19. If he ends up on adult probation and violates that, he could land in jail for up to 40 years, Wilson said.
Affluenza is not an officially recognized condition, but instead of the recommended 20 years in prison the then 16-year-old was sentenced to rehab and 10 years’ probation.
“We do not anticipate being able to do so unless and until he arrives in the United States”, said Scott Brown and William Reagan Wynn.
Tarrant County began investigating this month after a video on Twitter appeared to show the teen among a group around a table littered with plastic cups and cans of beer in a game of beer pong.
Taylor says he isn’t sure if the Couches will be deported or extradited back to the U.S.
His mother was later declared missing.
Couch was also ordered to enroll in a rehabilitation program, which he did.
The “affluenza” term was apparently used for the first time explicitly in defense during Couch’s trial, but has been a theory in sociological and psychological circles since the late 1990s to explain the impact of indulgent parenting, said Daniel Medwed, a criminal law professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
And she told the teen that he, not his parents, is responsible for his actions.
Couch was driving drunk and speeding on a dark two-lane road south of Fort Worth in June 2013 when he crashed into a disabled SUV off to the side, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in Couch’s pickup truck.
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Two people riding in the bed of the teen’s pickup were tossed in the crash and severely injured.
