Man Pleads Guilty To Raping Boy Near School (Illegal Immigrant)

NBC ^ | November 15, 2007

[Dante3]

In Maryland a Lazara Arellano de Hogue, 41, was convicted in the hit and run death of a toddler and hitting the toddler's grandmother - she reportedly honked her horn and then hit them and dragged the kid for nearly a mile.

No mention was made of her nationality in my paper. Later it was reported that she was Mexican - one report stated that she said she was illegally in this country and in another the police stated she was legally.

She was sentenced to ten years but might get out earlier. Naturally, she had to be provided with an interpreter.

[kcvl]

Driver said she didn’t know she hit child
Suspect thought she just hit grandmother, boyfriend explains

Arellano de Hogue was driving Mondragon’s red 1999 Dodge Ram pickup home from Wal-Mart, he said.

A native of Mexico, mother of four — the youngest of whom is 11 — and grandmother of one, she has lived in the United States for about 30 years, he said.

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“She’s here on a “visa”, for ALL these years. Still hasn’t bothered to learn any English. The article goes on to say, however, the last 3 years she hasn’t worked, she’s been on disability.”

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Arellano de Hogue is a permanent resident of the United States and has taken - but not yet received the results of - a citizenship test, her lawyer, Michael A. Zwaig, said in court.

She has two sons, ages 10 and 14, and lives with her fiance, Cirilo Mondragon. The woman’s two younger brothers, Solvano and Jose Arellano de Hogue, traveled from Florida to attend yesterday’s hearing, the defense attorney said.

The defendant has not worked in three years, her lawyer said, since a serious back injury left her on disability.

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And a Catholic priest who has known Arellano de Hogue for two years described her as a prayerful woman who was so cautious about driving that she had both of her family’s vehicles blessed before a three-week trip to her native Mexico in July last year.

The eldest of nine children, Arellano de Hogue grew up in a small Mexican village with no running water and left school after the third or fourth grade to help raise her siblings, defense attorney Ricardo D. Zwaig told the judge.

After “being victimized” as a teenager, she moved about 25 years ago to the United States, married a man who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic and took a job as a housekeeper to support her family, the defense attorney said during the hearing.

He later declined to elaborate on the trauma that his client suffered in Mexico.

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Kenai Santos was seated in the back of a pickup truck, being driven home from a shopping trip by an older female friend, when, she said, she saw a woman appear in the truck’s path.

The driver of the truck, Lazara Arellano de Hogue, honked her horn but continued driving, Santos testified yesterday in court, and the woman in the street appeared to have been struck.

“I saw her falling sideways,” Santos said in Spanish through a translator.

Moments later, the truck turned onto a side street and Arellano de Hogue removed a stroller that was jammed underneath the truck, Santos said. Then the women got back into the pickup and drove away.

“As I approached him, his eyes focused on me,” Officer Dominic Rizzo said. “His hands were opening and closing and he appeared to be breathing in rapid, short, choppy breaths.”

As the boy’s relatives in the courtroom wept softly, Rizzo testified that the boy’s jeans were in shreds and the flesh on his left hip and thigh had been worn away. He radioed for a medic unit and told the dispatcher that if one didn’t arrive soon, the boy likely would die, he recalled.

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A Baltimore woman testifying in the vehicular manslaughter trial of Lazara Arellano de Hogue said that she tried several times to tell de Hogue that she had a baby and stroller wedged under her car.

Douglas said she pointed and shouted and honked her horn, telling Arellano de Hogue that she had a baby under that stroller. The stroller was lodged near the front wheel on the passenger side of the truck.