Suspect Faces Smuggling Charges Stemming From Boy’s Death on I-5

A citizen of Mexico was charged Friday in federal court in San Diego with felony alien-smuggling linked to the death of an 8-year-old Mexican boy who was struck by a car and killed last month while dashing across Interstate 5 near the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint.

Antonio Marin-Colon, 24, who was arrested Thursday by Border Patrol agents, may also face federal and state prosecution, possibly even an involuntary manslaughter charge, in the Aug. 8 death in northern San Diego County of Constantino Loreto Marin, officials said Friday.

A manslaughter charge, which would be filed in state court, would mark an aggressive and novel turn in the prosecution of alien smuggling that results in highway deaths. The boy’s death already has renewed calls for bolstered safety measures to reduce the hazard to the undocumented pedestrians who regularly cross busy San Diego-area freeways.

Over the past two years, the count of illegal aliens negotiating the area’s freeways on foot has increased dramatically, reflecting the rising volume of illegal immigration, U.S. officials have said.

State prosecutors said Friday that they are still deciding whether the manslaughter charge can be legally brought, but said initial indications are that it would be proper.

“We’d have to satisfy the requirement of finding that (Marin-Colon) put (the boy) in deadly peril through a very negligent act,” said John A. Hewicker, a deputy district attorney and chief of the office’s complaints department.

“But, geez, crossing eight lanes of high-speed traffic in the commission of a (purported) federal felony, it just seems like, and I haven’t looked at the statutes or looked at the laws, it seems, common sense-wise, that it ought to be a punishable act,” Hewicker said.

Hewicker said deputies did not have an immediate deadline for reaching the decision.

Marin-Colon, a native of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero who has listed his residence as Tijuana since last year, was arrested at 5 p.m. Thursday in San Ysidro, Border Patrol spokesman Ted Swofford said.

Also known as Amado Marcial-Hernandez, he was identified in a photo lineup by other people who alleged he had smuggled them across the border, Swofford said.

Marin-Colon was charged Friday in federal court in San Diego with a single count of alien smuggling, Assistant U.S. Atty. Pat O’Toole said.

U.S. Magistrate Barry Ted Moskowitz set a bail hearing for next Friday, O’Toole said. Marin-Colon is awaiting that hearing at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, O’Toole said.

Marin-Colon has been arrested twice on felony alien smuggling charges, once in September, 1989, and again last July, Swofford said. His record shows one misdemeanor conviction--for illegal entry--from the two cases, Swofford said.

Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, are studying additional charges against Marin-Colon, most likely conspiracy to smuggle aliens, O’Toole said. Charges directly stemming from the boy’s death would have to be brought in state court, O’Toole said.

Constantino Loreto Marin, accompanied by his mother and five other brothers and sisters, was en route to Orange County from Mexico when he was hit and killed along I-5 shortly after midnight Aug. 8 by a southbound car. The driver of the car was not charged.

The boy was last in line among a group that was crossing the freeway about 1 1/2 miles north of the U.S. immigration checkpoint in northern San Diego County. He died at the scene.