The moment the car slammed into her, Audrey Marquez became a human missile. The 15-year-old, on her way to school last Thursday morning, somersaulted three times in the air as she was thrown nearly half the length of a football field. She was hit so hard she was knocked out of her shoes.
"It sounded like a car hitting another car," said Peter Perez, who was stopped at the intersection waiting for Audrey to cross. "It almost seemed like the impact slowed him (the driver). He veered into the left lane, otherwise the car would have run over her. He literally ran around her."
Perez says this as if he's surprised. I don't know why. Hit and run is all the rage anymore. Even the courts don't treat it as much of a crime.
The driver accused of hitting Audrey and leaving her there in the street was out of jail before she was out of intensive care. His bail? Well, prepare to be stunned.
Audrey, a sophomore at La Joya Community High School in Avondale, was in a marked crosswalk near school when she was hit just before 7 a.m. Thursday. Perez, a counselor at the school, said the driver came barreling through the school zone, then drove around her body as she lay in the street. Both her legs were shattered and the bone in her right arm was torn away from her shoulder. Her dad says she'll walk again, in a year.
Meanwhile, Jose Angel Montes-Chavez, 52, is walking around now. Avondale police found the car that hit Audrey abandoned in a cotton field. The next day they arrested Montes-Chavez, who admitted driving the car and getting its owner to report it stolen after the crash.
Within a day he was out of jail. Court Commissioner Joan Huls ordered electronic monitoring and set his bail at zero. ZERO.
And the electronic monitoring will only be done at night, according to Mike Goss, deputy chief of the Adult Probation Department.
Meanwhile, nobody seems to know whether Montes-Chavez is here legally. His initial court hearing was conducted in Spanish, and Mark Marquez, Audrey's father, said he has no driver's license or insurance. Avondale police say they didn't ask him his immigration status. Jail officials did and were told that he was born in Mexico but is a U.S. citizen, prompting them to send a routine inquiry to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Jerry Sheridan, chief of custody for the jail. ICE never replied.
It's enough to make you wonder why voters even bothered with Proposition 100. The new law, which takes effect later this week, denies bail in cases such as this to those here illegally. Of course, you have to have a way of knowing they're here illegally, but that's another story.
The real issue here is why the courts seem so unconcerned with whether a guy who ran once will run again. I'd ask but a court spokesman said Huls couldn't explain why she saw no need for bail. Pending case, you know. It's the usual dodge we hear when judges are asked to explain themselves.
As for Mark Marquez, he's wondering whether his daughter will ever be the same and how he'll pay the medical bills beyond what his own insurance covers and how the man accused of hitting his daughter could possibly be free without posting so much as a penny in bail.
"He ran from the scene of the crime," Marquez said. "He knew he hit somebody. He knew he was leaving somebody on the side of the road to die and he just took off. He not only took off but tried to cover his tracks."
Marquez, having little experience with the justice system, is incredulous that such a thing could happen. He'll learn.
(Illegal Alien) Hit-Run Suspect Out Of Jail For Free
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