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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is asking authorities in North Carolina to keep an illegal immigrant charged in a deadly hit-and-run that killed three people behind bars.
Javiel Pena Sola, a Salvadoran citizen, allegedly struck and killed three people traveling in a vehicle on July 18 in Salisbury before he fled the scene. He was found with the help of a police K-9, ICE said.
Two victims were pronounced dead at the scene, while a third was airlifted to a hospital where they later died.
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“I heard people screaming … and they pulled the man out; and as they pulled him out, he started screaming,” witness Quindel Woods told WSOC-TV.
Sola’s vehicle was later found in a creek. He is charged with three counts of hit-and-run involving serious injury or death.
ICE has lodged a detainer with local authorities to keep him in custody.
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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said Sola was arrested in 2016 but was released. She said he entered the United States through Arizona in April 2022.
“Although ICE had arrested him in 2016, the Obama Administration RELEASED him into American communities,” she said. “These deaths were 100% preventable. Open borders and sanctuary policies have deadly consequences.”
Sola’s criminal history includes prior convictions for reckless endangerment, failure to stop after an accident involving damage to an attended vehicle, and driving without a license in Maryland in July 2015, as well as an arrest for escaping from custody.
After his arrest in Maryland on charges of escaping from custody, law enforcement officials in Baltimore honored an ICE detainer and turned him over to federal agents in March 2016. He was then released by the Obama administration two months later, ICE said.
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