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Posted on Wed, Jan. 24, 2007

FEDERAL COURT
Smuggler pleads guilty in deaths of 3
A Bahamian smuggler pleaded guilty to murdering three Caribbean migrants who drowned in a 2005 crossing to South Florida.BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

A smuggler operating between the Bahamas and South Florida pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to second-degree murder charges in the deaths of three Caribbean women whose bodies washed ashore after he ordered the passengers to jump off his vessel during a 2005 crossing.

Zhivargo McBride, a 25-year-old Bahamian, also pleaded guilty to alien smuggling charges before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard in Miami. He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment at his sentencing on April 6, though federal guidelines recommend between 14 and 17 years.

His co-defendant, Devon Russell, also of the Bahamas, still faces charges of profiting from the smuggling operation and causing the death of one of the three women. He is a fugitive, authorities said.

''Migrant smuggling must stop,'' said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, who cited a half-dozen cases involving the death of migrants during the past two years. ``It is illegal, it is dangerous, it is deadly. . . . Smugglers don't care about the human tragedies they cause.''

According to authorities, McBride and Russell were paid between $2,500 and $7,000 by each of the migrants who went on the fatal journey to South Florida. The total number of passengers -- 10 -- included three women, identified as D.T., A.T. and I.P., who drowned as McBride's boat approached Broward County's shore.

Police said the bodies of Diane Mecca Thompson, a Jamaica native and mother of two, and Angeline Thelusma, of Haiti, were found Nov. 5, 2005, on the sand on Pompano Beach.

The body of a third woman, an unidentified Haitian, was also found.

A fourth passenger, identified as ''Y.F.'' in the indictment, suffered serious injury from striking the boat's propeller. She later recovered from her injuries.

McBride was a fugitive until last July, when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance plane spotted a speedboat traveling during the night from the Bahamas.

The pilots alerted two Customs 39-foot Midnight Express boats with four 225-horsepower engines. They gave chase, stopping the vessel.

Among those on board was McBride, who had been wanted since the earlier deadly crossing by the Broward Sheriff's Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The fatal smuggling operation unfolded on the night of Nov. 4, 2005, when Russell ferried the 10 migrants to Nassau, where they boarded a go-fast boat operated by McBride, authorities said. Russell did not join McBride on the trip to South Florida.

Early the following morning, when it was cold and still dark, McBride ordered everyone to jump into the ocean several hundred feet from Broward's shore line. Some on board screamed that they could not swim.

McBride killed the three women ''by ordering [them] off a boat and into deep water,'' prosecutors Marc Anton and Patricia Diaz said in the indictment.

Thompson's parents, who live in Los Gatos, Calif., told The Miami Herald in an earlier interview that their daughter had two young sons. She had been working in Nassau as a bartender but had always dreamed of coming to the United States.

Clarence Thompson said he didn't know his daughter was planning an illegal trip to the United States.

A fisherman found her body at the Pompano Beach Fishing Pier and called police.

Someone found Thelusma's body in the 600 block of North Ocean Drive.