HOUSTON — Videos collected by local investigators make it “pretty obvious” that an ICE officer intentionally ran over Miguel Parra Hernandez during an immigration stop Saturday, which could lead to assault charges, the district attorney said Tuesday.“This was an intentional striking and running over of the person by the vehicle, and in that case, that is an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Texas,” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News.Teare said the federal government is not cooperating with the investigation conducted by his office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
He also said ICE may have allowed the erasure of critical data in the vehicle involved in striking Parra, who was on foot.Teare said that in his seven years as a Harris County vehicular crimes division chief, he has reviewed video from a number of other auto-pedestrian collision cases.
He said the video his investigators have gathered in Parra’s case “goes above” the video that was posted online and obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston.“My viewing of it, and many other investigators that have viewed it, as well, it’s pretty obvious that this was an intentional striking and running over of the person by the vehicle, and in that case, that is an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Texas,” he said.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare.Raquel Natalicchio / Houston Chronicle via GettyParra, 48, was left with multiple breaks and fractures in his body, according to his attorney and an advocate who has been speaking on his behalf.He had surgery on one leg and faces multiple additional operations, said Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of FIEL, an immigrant civil rights group.
Video obtained by KPRC shows a white truck headed in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway.It shows a vehicle jumping a yellow median and heading in the direction that Parra is running.For SubscribersFOR SUBSCRIBERSWhat to know ...