Thread: San Rafael man who threw child from car freed from Texas jai

San Rafael man who threw child from car freed from Texas jail
By Gary Klien

Posted: 02/26/2010 11:05:05 AM PST
Updated: 02/26/2010 11:38:08 AM PST


SAN RAFAEL — A San Rafael man accused of throwing his 2-year-old son out of a moving car in Texas was released this week after prosecutors dismissed the case.

Alfonso Israel De Leon, 35, was released from an El Paso jail after more than a year in custody. Prosecutors dropped child abuse charges Monday after court-appointed doctors concluded De Leon was insane at the time of the incident, said Robert Storch, a deputy public defender in El Paso.

Yet in a followup hearing Wednesday, the court decided that De Leon should be released from custody, rather than sent to a mental hospital, because he was not mentally ill and did not pose a risk to himself, Storch said.

"He has no history of mental illness," Storch said. "The doctors aren't saying he's mentally ill. They're just saying he had this weird psychotic episode."

De Leon, a legal U.S. resident but not a citizen, was also being detained on a federal immigration hold and could have been deported if convicted. But because he wasn't convicted, immigration authorities in Texas had no basis to continue holding him.

De Leon was believed to be returning to San Rafael, where his children and their mother live, Storch said.

The Marin County District Attorney's Office is reviewing the developments in the El Paso case.

De Leon was arrested in El Paso on Dec. 20, 2008, on allegations he threw the toddler from the car just before crashing into a guardrail. De Leon later told investigators he ejected the boy "after the Devil told him to throw out everything he did not need," according to a police affidavit.

The boy was treated for minor injuries, and De Leon's 4-year-old daughter, who also was in the car, was not injured.

At the time of the incident, De Leon was on probation in Marin for drunken driving with five prior DUI convictions. In 2006, he was declared a "habitual traffic offender" and his license was suspended until December 2009.

Despite his record, a Marin judge granted him permission to travel for the 2008 holidays to introduce his two children to their grandparents in Mexico, according to court documents.


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You have got to be making a joke, judge. It fell flat, IMO.