Thread: Honduras Immigrant Teen Drowns During Traffic Stop

I don't know if the mother and son are legal immigrants, however, I saw the mother interviewed on TV and she spoke Spanish while using an interpreter.

http://link.toolbot.com/washingtonpost.com/25822

Woodbridge Teen Drowns During Traffic Stop

By Candace Rondeaux and Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 3, 2006

A handcuffed Woodbridge teenager drowned early yesterday after he fled from a Virginia State Police cruiser during a traffic stop and plunged more than 60 feet off a bridge into the Occoquan River, state police said.

Rodger Rodriguez, 16, somehow escaped from the front seat of a locked police cruiser and jumped over a thigh-high concrete barrier into the river, state police said. The river is about 400 feet wide where the Interstate 95 bridge crosses it, and it separates Prince William County from Fairfax County.

Virginia State Police troopers investigate the spot where a Woodbridge teenager jumped into the Occoquan River after being arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. (By Dylan Moore -- The Potomac News Via Associated Press)

Rodriguez, who immigrated to the United States from Honduras 16 months ago, had been arrested on suspicion of drunken driving shortly before 3:20 a.m., after a state trooper clocked him going 90 mph on I-95 in Prince William.

Trooper Joshua Smith handcuffed Rodriguez's hands behind his back, put him in the front passenger seat of the cruiser and fastened his seat belt, Sgt. Terry Licklider said.

Rodriguez got out of the cruiser and fled as the trooper turned back to the 2001 Nissan Pathfinder that Rodriguez had been driving, accompanied by a friend. The trooper was planning to search the car and check for damage, Licklider said.

"The trooper looks back, and the right front door of the police car was open. When he looked over the side, he saw him in the water," Licklider said.

A team of divers from the Prince William Police Department searched for the teenager in the river for several hours before finding his body about 8:30 a.m., Licklider said. The teenager appeared to have drowned and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Licklider said that Smith could see Rodriguez, who was still handcuffed, struggling in the water about 60 feet below. Rodriguez, who did not struggle when he was arrested, did not seem distraught or make any comments before he jumped, Licklider said.

"There was no indication that he was depressed or upset or anything," Licklider said.

Licklider said that Rodriguez may have thought he could escape across an embankment by climbing over the barrier along the bridge. But the boy's mother, Gloria Elena Rodriguez, said she doubts that possibility.

"He knew the river was there. He knew," she said. "We don't understand how he escaped from the car handcuffed. How could he have gotten out? It's impossible if he was handcuffed. Why didn't they rescue him?"

[b]Rodriguez's mother said that her son had been drinking beer with friends at the family's Woodbridge home [/b][16 and allowed to drink beer in home with mother's knowledge] in the 13300 block of Kurtz Road. He received a call from another friend asking him for a ride. Rodriguez borrowed the Nissan Pathfinder from a friend and left the house with a teenage boy who also lives at the house. Rodriguez's mother said she was upstairs sleeping while her son was downstairs with friends. When she went to his room later, she found several empty beer bottles, and he was gone.

Rodriguez's mother said that her son was familiar with the area along the highway and could not have purposely dived over the bridge.

Police said the teenager who accompanied Rodriguez was still in the passenger seat of the Pathfinder when Smith turned his back on the cruiser and began to approach the vehicle. Licklider said that teenager had also been drinking but did not appear to be inebriated. The teenager, who was not named because of his age, was released a few hours after the incident, Licklider said.

It was unclear yesterday how Rodriguez escaped from the cruiser. State police cruisers are not equipped with security dividers or gated windows between the front and back seats. Standard state police procedure calls for troopers to handcuff arrestees, place them in the front passenger seat, fasten the seat belt and lock the door. The main lock control is on the driver's side, Licklider said.

"How he got out, I don't know," Licklider said. "He would either have to reach across there and take his foot or his hand and hit that door lock, or lift that knob up on the passenger side to get out."

Licklider said that internal affairs investigators will conduct a review to determine whether Smith, a rookie trooper who graduated from the state police academy about a year ago, followed proper procedure. An autopsy will be conducted on Rodriguez to determine the cause of death, and a report could be released tomorrow or Tuesday, Licklider said.

Rodriguez's mother said that her son, a former Gar-Field High School student, had recently left school and had planned to begin home-schooling. She said that Rodriguez was placed on probation four or five months ago after he tried to flee from police after a car he was riding in ran a red light.

He was an avid soccer fan who loved to dance, she said.

Rodriguez sat in her son's room last night, sobbing and asking over and over, "What do I do now?" His room was simple, with a single bed, two pairs of work boots and a folding chair. He had a television and a computer, which he used to chat with his friends, his mother said. His stepfather, Jilton Acosta, a construction worker, said that he sometimes took his stepson with him on construction jobs.

Geoffrey Alpert, chairman of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, said it's not clear whether Smith erred.

Because there were two youths involved and Smith was uncertain whether it would be necessary to arrest both, he might have placed one in the front seat because he did not want them to be together, Alpert said. Because the police car did not have a barrier between the front and back seats, as some do, it might not have mattered where Rodriguez was seated, he said. Even if he had been put in the back seat, there's a chance he could have flipped over to the front seat and escaped.

"It's discretionary," Alpert said. "Normally, you'd put him in the back seat, because it's protective. But again, there are too many things we don't know. It's not clear-cut."

Licklider said that it is common for arrestees to try to escape, particularly when they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but he said that yesterday's incident was unusual.

"We've had people that have tried to escape before, of course, but to jump over a bridge like that, no. . . . It's a pretty steep drop," Licklider said.

If he was familiar with the area, what made him think he could swim handcuffed?