When the FBI Comes Calling…®
December 24, 2004
Testimony of boy's death stood out in smuggling trial
By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press Writer
Although they never knew his name, the way he died still haunts them.
The often tearful recollections of the final moments of a 5-year-old Mexican boy's life inside a sweltering trailer stood out among the weeks of testimony in the first trial connected to the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt.
Victor Jesus Rodriguez and Fredy Giovanni Garcia-Tobar were convicted by a federal jury Thursday for their roles in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants.
One of those victims was Marco Antonio Villasenor, who had asked never to be separated from his father again. Marco Antonio's father, Juan Antonio Villasenor, obliged, bringing him to the United States. But the promise proved tragic.
The two were among more than 70 illegal immigrants packed into a hot, airless trailer by a smuggling ring that tried to transport them from South Texas to Houston in May 2003.
The trailer was abandoned at a truck stop near Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston, after the immigrants began succumbing to the deadly temperatures inside. Seventeen immigrants were found dead in the trailer. Two died later.
David Fernando Amaya-Leon was one of the many survivors who testified about Marco Antonio's slow descent into death and of a father's helplessness to save his son.
Some immigrants had managed with their fingernails to punch out lights in the back of the trailer in an attempt to let in air.
"The father tried to use the holes to help his child breathe," said Amaya-Leon. "The father was very exhausted, very desperate."
Among the screams of all the immigrants in the trailer, Doris Sulema Argueta said she remembered hearing the cries of the boy's father.
"I heard him saying his boy was dying," she said.
At that moment, the Honduran woman recalled thinking about her three children and the reasons why she endured such dangerous travel _ a chance to provide them one day with a good home and education.
Villasenor's efforts to do the same for his son didn't succeed as the deadly heat eventually took both their lives.
But before the boy's father died, Lucy Maribel Sierra-Urquia remembered hearing his anguishing cry for his son.
"He screamed that the child had died," she said.
Garcia-Tobar was convicted on 39 of the 58 counts of harboring and transporting illegal immigrants that he faced. Rodriguez was convicted of 42 counts.
Each man could face life in prison when sentenced on March 28.
The testimony about the child's death was probably a "devastating blow" for the defendants, said Douglas McNabb, a Houston attorney not connected with the trial who specializes in federal criminal defense.
"For an innocent child like that to be treated in that manner and to die in that manner I think would be incredibly prejudicial against the defendants," he said. "The death of such an innocent is very difficult to overcome in such a case."
The judge would have been careful to instruct the jury on how to weigh such testimony with whether the defendants were guilty, said Knut Johnson, a San Diego attorney who has represented defendants in immigrant smuggling cases.
"But in such cases, particularly involving a child, jurors are more likely to convict because it's so emotional," he said.
Many of the same survivors who testified in this trial are expected to tell the same stories when Tyrone Williams, the Schenectady, N.Y. man accused of driving and abandoning the trailer, is tried next month.
He is the only one of 14 indicted defendants who could face the death penalty if convicted.
This article can also be found in the Plainview Daily Herald, KHOU, New York Newsday, Denton Record Chronicle, and Fort Worth Star Telegram.