From The Blaze
On September 9, the 56-year-old Mexican national Maximino Delgado Lagunas was sentenced to 15 years to life for murdering a 6-year-old Orange County girl. Lagunas was found guilty of one felony count of second-degree murder on June 22.
Despite having been convicted in 2015 for drunk driving, on February 17, 2018, Lagunas got behind the wheel with a blood alcohol level nearly three times California’s legal limit of 0.8%. Around 2:15 p.m., Lagunas drove onto the opposite sidewalk where Grace Aguilar was playing.
Lagunas, a twice-deported illegal alien, ran Grace Aguilar down and then smashed into a parked vehicle.
The child died of her injuries.
Lagunas, whose blood alcohol was reportedly .22%, told police that his brakes were not working and that he had lost control of his vehicle.
While he would otherwise have faced voluntary manslaughter charges, his prior conviction enabled prosecutors to upgrade the charges to second-degree murder. Don’t miss out on content from Dave Rubin free of big tech censorship. Listen to The Rubin Report now.
KCOP13 reported that this upgrade was made possible by Lagunas’ signing of a Watson advisement in 2015. A Watson advisement is a statement that an individual convicted with a DUI can be asked to sign, indicating foreknowledge that drunk driving can kill or injure people.
Orange County district attorney Todd Spitzer stated in a Friday release: “A six-year-old girl is dead because someone who had already been warned about the dangers of drinking and driving ignored those warnings and got behind the wheel drunk. Every time someone drives under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they take the risk that they could kill someone.” Spitzer noted further, “This time it was a six-year-old girl named Grace who was just playing on the sidewalk.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told KNBC that Lagunas had been deported in 2001 and again in 2008.
After his 2015 DUI conviction, Lagunas was placed on informal probation and set free, even though requirements stipulate that he was supposed to have been detained 48 hours for pickup by immigration officials.
Lagunas was not the only illegal alien caught driving drunk in 2018.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were 1,113 criminal non-citizens convicted of driving under the influence in 2018.
In 2019, the number of convictions fell to 614, and the number dropped again in 2020 to 364. However, in 2021 there were 1,629 DUI convictions. So far in 2022, there have already been 1,241 illegal aliens convicted of driving while intoxicated.
Convictions only tell a partial story. There is also the matter of the Americans maimed or killed by criminal non-citizens.
Earlier this year, illegal alien Jose Virgilio Carcamo Elvir left a 72-year-old Florida man dead and three others injured in a drunk-driving crash.
In January, illegal alien Jarol Leiva-Navarro killed a 32-year-old American while reportedly drunkenly driving 110 miles per hour.
In March 2021, an illegal alien named Rolbin Pacheco killed Cheston Edwards, a North Carolina father of two, while driving drunk.
A 5-year-old girl was killed in a Florida hit-and-run last October when an intoxicated illegal alien was speeding at night without his lights on.
Three members of the Thin Blue Line police motorcycle club were killed outside San Antonio in July 2020 when a DACA-protected illegal alien with a lengthy criminal record drunkenly ran them down.
