BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury on Friday found a driver guilty of intoxication manslaughter over the deaths of eight people who were struck by an SUV that plowed into a crowded bus stop outside a migrant shelter on the U.S.-Mexico border.
George Alvarez, 35, was found guilty of eight counts of intoxication manslaughter at the end of a weeklong trial, said Edward Sandoval, a Cameron County prosecutor. He was also convicted on 10 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
A Cameron County jury sentenced Alvarez to 20 years in prison for each count of intoxicated manslaughter. A judge then decided Alvarez would spend 60 years in prison in total.
The jury handed down the verdict more than a year after authorities say Alvarez lost control of the vehicle after running a red light. The deadly scene happened in Brownsville, which has long been an epicenter for migration.
Brownsville Police Chief Felix Sauceda said at the time of the crash that he SUV ran a red light, lost control, flipped on its side and hit 18 people. Six people died at the scene and 12 people were critically injured. The victims were all male and several of them were from Venezuela.
Following the verdict, Alvarez apologized to the families of the victims.
“From the bottom of my heart, I’m really sorry,” he said.
A shelter operator said victims struck by the vehicle had been waiting for the bus to return to downtown Brownsville after spending the night at the overnight shelter. Authorities said Alvarez tried to flee but was held down by several people at the scene.
Alvarez admitted to having an addiction to cocaine since the age of 11 after he said his parents left him to be raised with a grandparent. Art Teniente, the prosecutor for the Cameron County District Attorney’s office, said he believed the accident was unintentional but that Alvarez’s drug addiction played a role in the fatal crash.
Defense attorneys argued Alvarez’s test results only found a trace of the drug but that he wasn’t intoxicated on the day his vehicle struck the crowd at the bus stop. He asked the jury to consider Alvarez’s six children and consider a sentence of either probation or the minimum two-year sentence for each count of intoxication manslaughter.
