http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Oct ... ews002.asp

Men admit to transporting illegals


By SARA AGNEW of the Tribune’s staff
Published Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Two Mexican nationals pleaded guilty yesterday to operating a business of transporting illegal aliens with a Chevrolet van that was later involved in a crash on Interstate 70 near Midway that killed five people.

Adrian Barraza-Gonzalez, 33, and Victor Alonso Medina-Perez, 27, both admitted in a federal courtroom in Jefferson City that they were hired earlier this year by a California man to drive illegal aliens across the United States.

Gelson Omar Mancilla-Santiago, 22, of Guatemala later used the same van to drive 20 people, at least 19 of them illegal aliens, from California through Boone County this summer. The 14-passenger van was eastbound on I-70 between the Midway and Rocheport exits June 17 when it overturned.

Four victims were dead by the time firefighters arrived on the scene. Two of those victims were found in the westbound lanes of I-70. Another passenger later died of injuries suffered in the crash.

Don Ledford, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said Mancilla-Santiago, who pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to transport illegal aliens and re-entry after deportation, remains in federal custody, awaiting a sentencing hearing that has not been scheduled.

According to an affidavit given by Erick Teschner, a special agent in the Kansas City office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Barraza-Gonzalez and Medina-Perez left Los Angeles in early May with more than 15 illegal aliens in the van. On May 5, Teschner said, the men used the van to take three illegal aliens into Fairfax County, Va., where all the occupants were arrested and the van impounded. Some time after that, the van was taken from the tow lot in Virginia without permission of the authorities and taken back to California, where Mancilla-Santiago got ahold of it.

Teschner said Barraza-Gonzalez and Medina-Perez told him they were hired by an unidentified California man who paid them each $800 to take people across the country. Barraza-Gonzalez said he had driven the van for the man on four separate occasions, delivering passengers to destinations in New York, Maryland and Virginia.

Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said today that he isn’t sure whether the van was stolen from the Virginia lot or mistakenly released.

"I’m not sure of the status of the investigation," he said.

In August, Mancilla-Santiago testified that he was not driving the van when it crashed near Columbia. However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Gonzalez said that Mancilla-Santiago gave conflicting accounts of the incident and that he was the original driver of the van.