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MOAB — A California man was not involved in human smuggling when the van he was driving crashed near the Utah-Colorado border last month, according to his attorney.
"This was a group of people carpooling," defense attorney Cara Tangaro said Tuesday. "That's not illegal, even if some of them are undocumented, even if they're Mexican. It is not illegal to carpool."
Tangaro's comments came after an initial court appearance for her client, Elvis J. Quintanilla-Vasquez. The Lancaster, California, man is charged in 7th District Court with four counts of aggravated human smuggling, a second- degree felony, three counts of human smuggling, a third-degree felony, and one count of improper lane travel, a class C misdemeanor.
State and federal investigators believe Quintanilla-Vasquez, 36, was driving a Toyota minivan on May 16 when it hit a bump in the road about 4:30 a.m., veered off I-70 and overturned.
Four men inside the van died at the scene, according to the Utah Highway Patrol. Troopers have released the names of three of the victims but have not released the fourth man's name because they've been unable so far to contact his family, UHP Sgt. Todd Royce said Tuesday.
"It's been difficult to find his next of kin," the sergeant said.
Quintanilla-Vasquez and three other men in the van were taken to the hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado, for treatment. A woman who was in the van when it crashed left the area before troopers arrived and has not been found.
My client is the one who called 911 and alerted them to this accident, so there was no effort to run or to flee.
–Cara Tangaro, defense attorney
The woman's disappearance shows that Quintanilla-Vasquez could have left the crash site as well had he chosen to do so, Tangaro said.
"My client is the one who called 911 and alerted them to this accident, so there was no effort to run or to flee," she said.
Three of the surviving passengers told investigators Quintanilla-Vasquez and the woman picked them up in California, according to charging documents. The group was traveling to Chicago to work for a member of Quintanilla- Vasquez's family, the charges state.
Consular cards, permanent resident cards and Social Security cards found on the four men who died were all counterfeit, investigators said. Grand County Attorney Andrew Fitzgerald added Tuesday that authorities have developed additional leads that link the van that crashed to an organized human smuggling operation.
"It appears that the van (Quintanilla-Vasquez) was driving is used to transport undocumented workers up from Mexico to Phoenix to California and then out east," Fitzgerald said in court, noting that federal investigators had confirmed that the van was in the Phoenix area two weeks before the crash.
Tangaro told the court that prosecutors still had not provided the defense with any of the police reports in the case.
"I'll be very interested to see what information the state thinks they have to prove the charges against my client," Tangaro said after court. "We will have some information to rebut that and show that my client, along with the others in the van, is a victim in this case."
After the hearing, Fitzgerald defended the amount of time it is taking for state and federal authorities to complete their investigation. He also stood by his decision to file charges based solely on "the initial investigation" and to have an arrest warrant issued for Quintanilla-Vasquez before he was released from the hospital.
"We were definitely worried he might disappear from the hospital," the prosecutor said. "We believe he had some culpability (in the crash)."
Quintanilla-Vasquez remains in the Grand County Jail, where he is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail. A preliminary hearing has been set for June 17.
