A Texas teenager serving probation for killing four people in a drunken-driving wreck had a “going away party” before disappearing for almost three weeks, the Tarrant County, Texas, sheriff said Tuesday.
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Texas officials are convinced that Ethan Couch, the teen who killed four people in a drunken-driving wreck in 2013, fled the country with the help of his mother.
“Mexico’s Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that its agents have been working with American authorities via the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara since December 26 to track down and capture 18-year-old Ethan Couch and his mother, Tonya Couch”.
On Monday evening, a Tarrant County official told Reuters that the fugitive teen had been taken into custody, though the official did not say where he was detained.
Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson said that she expected the judge to hold Couch after his juvenile hearing, and that she hoped it would be in an adult jail.
Though prosecutors pushed for a 20-year prison term, Couch was sentenced to 10 years of probation and no jail time, largely thanks to testimony from psychologist G. Dick Miller, who said that Couch had an unhealthy relationship with his millionaire parents, who didn’t teach him that unsafe actions have consequences. The condition is not recognised as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association and its invocation drew ridicule.
In the auto accident that changed his life and the lives of several others, “Affluenza Teen” Ethan Couch, who was just 16 years old at the time, had a blood alcohol content of 0.24, which is three times the legal limit.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Mexican official said Tonya Couch was placed on a flight to Los Angeles because there were no more flights available to Texas.
“I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so”, Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said.
Jalisco state prosecutor Eduardo Almaguer Ramirez said US authorities knew the mother and son were in Puerto Vallarta and had asked Mexican police to help capture them. Their passports had been reported missing by the teen’s father, who has been cooperating with investigators.
Since the time of the incident, Sheriff Anderson said, it has been clear that his mother, Tonya Couch, did not believe that her son needed to be punished. They were arrested for not accurately filling out immigration paperwork and for exceeding the number of days they were supposed to be in Mexico, officials there said.
Couch has a hearing scheduled for January 19 to determine whether the case will be handled in adult court. They reportedly “could not prove their legal status in Mexico”, and will be deported to the U.S.
Before the video surfaced, prosecutors had already asked the juvenile court that had handled his case to transfer it to adult court, where the penalty for a probation violation could be to spend the rest of his 10-year probation in prison. Continued to gather information both locally and away and learned through some interviews that what we suspected all along had happened, that they had planned to disappear, that they even had something that was nearly akin to a going-away party before they left town.
He said that he did not renew the lease and that their last day in the home was August 31.
In the 2013 drunk-driving case Couch, from Keller, near Fort Worth, admitted to four counts of intoxication manslaughter.
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Police handed the pair over to Mexican immigration authorities for being in the country without the proper permission so they could be returned to the United States, the Jalisco attorney general’s office said.
