Posted on 04/23/2009 10:31:33 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
A Clarke County judge sentenced a teenage illegal immigrant to eight years in prison for hitting and killing a woman while driving drunk along Commerce Road last summer.
Abel Gonzalez-Perez will be held in a youth detention facility until he turns 17 in September, then will be transferred to adult prison, according to prosecutors.
Superior Court Judge Steve Jones on Thursday ordered Gonzalez-Perez to serve seven years of probation after he is released from prison.
Federal immigration officials will decide whether to deport the teen to his native Mexico after he finishes his prison sentence, according to Brian Patterson, chief assistant district attorney for the Western Judicial Circuit.
As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Gonzalez-Perez pleaded guilty Jan. 26 to first-degree vehicular homicide, DUI and hit-and-run in the June death of 19-year-old Nayasheika "Keisha" Cooper, who was hit from behind while she walked with her 3-year-old son.
Jones approved the sentence that prosecutors recommended.
Defense attorney Jim Smith asked for leniency, arguing his client never had been in trouble before, worked hard to send money to his mother in Mexico and made a "mistake" the day he killed Cooper.
But Keisha Cooper's mother, Tracey Cooper, told Jones she didn't understand the plea agreement and asked the judge to give more prison time to the teenager who hit her daughter and kept on driving.
"He left her there to die and I want him to get more than eight years," she said.
At one point, she broke down in tears, and a sheriff's deputy escorted her from the witness stand out of the courtroom.
Walton Gantt, the victim's father, told Jones how his grandson, now 4, wakes up at night calling for his mother and asking if she's coming home.
"I want justice to be served," he told the judge.
Police first charged Gonzalez-Perez as a juvenile, because he was 15 when he killed Cooper, but a judge transferred the case to Superior Court.
Gonzalez-Perez struck Cooper on June 14 as she walked on the shoulder of Commerce Road to buy chips and a drink for her son at a convenience up the road from her home.
Roderick "Nick Nack" Davenport Jr. ran home covered in mud and told relatives, "Mama's been hit - red truck, red truck," Tracey Cooper said in an interview they day after her daughter died.
Gantt and his son raced up to the store looking for Keisha, and while searching the side of the road on the way back to their home found her in a ditch, barely alive. She died at the hospital.
His grandparents think their daughter pushed Nick Nack out of the way when she saw the truck bearing down on them.
Police searched for the truck for nearly a week before they found it at an apartment complex off Sunset Drive in Western Clarke County.
Gonzalez-Perez told police he had borrowed the truck and was drinking at a friend's house before the crash. He said he had 24 beers that day, but thought he was OK to drive after napping for an hour, according to police.
Something tells me this whole trial was taxpayer-funded, as will be the killer’s entire prison term. Tell me again why he isn’t being deported or turned over to Mexican police?
Yet another liberal judge lets a criminal walk.
40 years is what he should have got.
Yeah, he did make a mistake that day. He was aiming for the both of them.
Because he would have killed another U.S. Citizen in six months if he were returned. We keep them in jail here, so they don’t get back out on the streets months later.
Return him to Mexico and they let him out. He crosses the border within six weeks and another U.S. Citizen is victimized.
No thanks.
Chalk up one more needless death to an illegal immigrant.
Every death like this would not have happened if we had clamped down on illegal immigration.
John McCain, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, George Bush, and many other politicians are guilty of contributing to a situation that cost this women her life, and her little boy his mother.
I hope you pricks have a hard time sleeping...
He should deported directly from prison, as soon as he serves his sentence.
However, we just can’t turn him over to the Mexican authorities. They have no jurisdiction to punish him for crimes committed outside of Mexico. If we just deported him, he would face no punishment at all, and probably sneak across the border again to kill more American citizens.
If we started simply deporting illegal alien felons, a horrible precedent would be set. Criminals from all over the world would know the could come here illegally, commit all sorts of crimes and face no punishment, other than deportation.
Well said. A lot of politicians and government official, who have allowed the menace of illegal immigration to continue and grow, have a lot of blood on their hands.
What ever happened to an eye for eye?
Why is that POS still alive?
Just orphaning kids that Americans won’t orphan.
Thank you.
Ping!
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