By Juyle Keeble at Uvalde Leader-News, September 17, 2020
Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office deputies assisted U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents to catch two vehicles Monday evening, with the drivers allegedly working together to smuggle humans in an attempt to evade law enforcement.
Both vehicles, a blue Honda Civic and a red Cadillac sedan entered Uvalde County from Farm to Market Road 114.
UCSO Sgt. Max Dor- flinger said U.S. Border Patrol agents alerted them about a Cadillac around 5:05 p.m. after a motorist reported suspicious activity with possible human smuggling.
The driver fled law enforcement after an attempted traffic stop on Farm to Market Road 481. Dorflinger said the Cadillac drove at high rates of speed in excess of 90 mph, entering the city of Uvalde and drove on streets including Fort Clark Road and High Street.
The Uvalde Police Department assisted with blocking traffic during the pursuit in town, helping to maintain public safety.
“It ended up going into the Uvalde Estates for a while, and ultimately went out Farm to Market Road 117 towards Batesville. The vehicle came to a stop in Zavala County and multiple subjects ran into the brush,” Dor- flinger said.
“The driver was apprehended. … As of 7 p.m. Monday night they had not found any illegal aliens.”
The driver, Abraham A. Niño, 21, of Austin, was arrested on charges of evading arrest and/or detention with a vehicle and human smuggling. He was subsequently booked into the Uvalde County Jail.
Dorflinger said Niño confessed to smuggling four individuals, and
he was friends with and working in coordination with a second vehicle Border Patrol agents were seeking.
Border Patrol agents noted both vehicles came from the same direction into Uvalde County before splitting up, possibly in an attempt to distract law enforcement officers.
The second driver, in the Honda Civic, was apprehended in the 5,000 block of U.S. Highway 90 East near the Spanish Dagger Ranch.
“That driver, we got him out of the vehicle, interviewed him, and he confessed to human smuggling as well and had four Mexican nationals with him,” Dorflinger said.
He pulled over and did not attempt to evade officers, so 18-year-old Edyn S. Vanegas, of Buda, was charged with human smuggling but not with evading arrest. The four Mexican nationals were taken into custody by Border Patrol agents.
“They take them out of the vehicle, they interview them, check them for weapons and get identification from them then Border Patrol takes custody of them. They put masks on them prior to transport,” Dorflinger said.
“Thankfully Border Patrol was able to disseminate information during the chase that led us to be able to locate the second vehicle that had kept going down 90.”
See the original article: https://www.uvaldeleadernews.com/articles/law-nabs-duo-for-human-smuggling/
