Tonya Couch, 48, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the charge, a third-degree felony, of aiding her son, Ethan, 18, after he was suspected of violating a deal that kept him out of prison.
Advertisement
Tonya Couch was escorted on an American Airlines flight by two sheriff’s deputies after being picked up from a Los Angeles County jail, according to Terry Grisham, executive administrator for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office in Texas.
Her bond was set at $US1 million.
Anderson met Tonya Couch at DFW Airport personally, he said, and rode shotgun in the Tarrant County van that returned the fugitive from Fort Worth.
If she is released on bond, whether it’s $1 million or the lower sum, he told her she will have to follow a number of conditions, which would include wearing an ankle monitor and turning in her passport.
Tonya Couch’s attorneys have said she is “eager to have her day in court”.
Sheriff Anderson said Thursday, “it’s not a question of if he’s coming back, it’s a question of when he’s coming back”.
State District Judge Wayne Salvant advised Tonya Couch of the charge at the hearing Friday.
The sheriff hopes that Tonya Couch will encourage Ethan to quickly return from Mexico, but did not say Thursday whether she’d agreed to do so.
The mother of the “affluenza” teen has not entered a plea during her arraignment in a Texas court.
Her lawyers said last week that she has done nothing illegal. Ethan Couch is in a Mexican immigration detention facility and fighting his deportation, Tarrant County officials said. I explained to her that this is a jail, not a resort. Enlarge NBC 5 DFW Tonya Couch appears in court in Texas on Friday.
Couch was charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon after she and her son were arrested last week in Puerto Vallarta, where they had fled as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation for a 2013 drunk-driving vehicle crash that killed four people.
Advertisement
His defense attorneys claimed that the teen, then 16-years-old, was the victim of “affluenza”, an inability to distinguish right from wrong based on his affluent upbringing.
