Cottonwood bus crash: Van driver鈥檚 real identity discovered
MARSHALL, MINN. - The woman in the Lyon County jail facing charges in last week’s deaths of four children is a 24-year-old from Guatemala who is in the United States illegally and had been using an alias, according to immigration officials.
Olga Marina Franco has been using the fake name of Alianiss Nunez Morales, they said Monday.
She was charged Friday in Lyon County District Court with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide, driving without a license and running a stop sign.
Franco’s fingerprints didn’t show up in U.S. immigration databases, which would indicate she had not yet in any way been encountered by immigration officials, ICE agents or citizenship workers, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok in a telephone interview from Dallas.
Immigration authorities wouldn’t say precisely how they figured out Franco’s identity.
During their investigation after last Tuesday’s crash, ICE officials showed a photograph to relatives of an Alianiss Morales in Puerto Rico. The people there said she wasn’t the same person as the woman jailed in Marshall.
Franco initially told investigators she was from Mexico.
Customs officials have placed a detainer on Franco, meaning that if she is released from the Lyon County jail for any reason, she will be turned over to federal authorities to face deportation.
A Marshall resident who said he is a cousin of Franco’s said family members don’t know how Franco ended up with a false identity.
Relatives said Franco looked shocked and scared in the hospital and in the courthouse after the crash, the cousin said.
He added that Franco was goodhearted.
Just like everybody else, she came to this country for the American dream … all those dreams are shattered with this, the cousin said.
He said that neither he nor other relatives wanted to identify themselves for fear their children might be harassed.
Franco moved to the United States three or four years ago, briefly living in Virginia before coming to live with friends in Montevideo, and then moving in with cousins in Marshall, the cousin said.
But Franco left Marshall to live in Willmar and ended up hanging out with the wrong people, the cousin said. She worked for several months at the Jennie-O plant in Willmar before taking a job in Cottonwood, which is about 140 miles west of the Twin Cities. Franco had told relatives that she’d recently moved to the town of Minneota with her boyfriend, whom they didn’t know, to be closer to her job with a cabinet maker in Cottonwood.
Franco said the boyfriend was in the van when the crash took place but fled the scene, leaving her pinned inside with a broken leg, according to the cousin.
Investigators have heard rumors that a man was in the van with Franco, but the investigation and interviews so far have not supported that, said Lt. Brian West of the Minnesota State Patrol.
Funerals and politics
Lakeview School in Cottonwood was closed Monday as brothers Jesse and Hunter Javens were buried. Jesse was 13, and Hunter, who had a twin sister, would have turned 10 Monday.
Services were held Sunday for Emilee Olson, 9, and are scheduled at 2 p.m. Thursday at the school for Reed Stevens, 12.
We keep praying for those families, Franco’s cousin said. I’ve got my own kids, too. They ride buses to school, too.
Of the 14 people injured in the crash, five remain hospitalized, including pickup driver James Hancock, who has been upgraded to good condition at a Sioux Falls, S.D., hospital. Hancock said he saw Franco’s van go through the stop sign and strike the bus, which tipped over on his pickup.
Two other children are listed in good condition and two others are in fair condition.
Public outcry from around the state and country thrust the accident into the heated national debate over illegal immigration.
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