- The Ford Escort was racing north on rural Seaside Road,
its occupants headed home from a wedding, when it ran a stop sign at 55
mph.
-
- The driver of a Ford F-150 traveling east through the
intersection never saw the Escort, police said.
-
- The T-bone crash killed the driver of the Escort, Rene
Leyva-Perez, and 4-year-old Daniel Salazar, who was in the back seat. Daniel's
pregnant mother, Marina Salazar, and the driver of the pickup were injured.
-
- When police arrived, they discovered that Leyva-Perez
had no auto insurance or driver's license - only a laminated ID card issued
by the tomato-packing plant where he worked - and that the car was registered
to a woman in Chesapeake and had Michigan plates.
-
- In the Escort's wreckage, they found empty cans of Modelo
Especial - acclaimed in Mexico as "the elite of beers."
-
- That violent collision nine days ago, on an unlit stretch
of Accomack County blacktop, is the latest example of a deadly trend:
-
- Since 2002, more than 90 people have been injured and
18 killed on the Eastern Shore in accidents involving Hispanic workers
driving rogue vehicles.
-
- The fatalities represent about one-fourth of the 71 highway
deaths on the Eastern Shore in that period, even though the year-round
Hispanic population makes up only 5 percent of the region's 51,000 residents.
Those numbers swell during tomato-picking season, from July through early
November, when most of the fatalities occurred.
-
- Accidents like the one on Oct. 1 have helped make the
77-mile stretch of U.S. 13 from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to the
Maryland state line one of the most treacherous highways in Virginia. In
2003, the fatality rate - deaths per miles driven - on that span of U.S.
13 was more than four times the rates on Interstates 64, 81 and 95 in Virginia.
-
- In all but three of the fatal accidents in which Hispanics
were at the wheel, the drivers had no insurance. In most cases, the vehicles
had no inspection stickers, the drivers carried no license and alcohol
was a factor. The vast majority of the victims in the fatalities were Hispanic.
-
- A review of State Police auto accident reports for 2002
through 2004 on the Eastern Shore also revealed that of the 179 accidents
involving Hispanic laborers:
-
- * Three-fourths of the drivers had no auto insurance
- more than four times the national rate for uninsured motorists.
-
- * Nearly all of the vehicles driven by migrants and other
laborers were registered to other drivers.
-
- * Ninety-three percent of the vehicles had out-of-state
tags - most of them from Tennessee.
-
- * The number of injuries per accident was about 50 percent
higher than the statewide average.
-
- The troopers patrolling U.S. 13, a busy artery connecting
Hampton Roads to the populous Northeast, are frustrated by the pattern
of lawlessness and mayhem.
-
- Only 10 troopers are assigned to the highways that crisscross
the Eastern Shore's 263 square miles - and on some shifts there is only
one trooper on duty for each of the Shore's two counties. First Sgt. J.P.
Koushel, who oversees the Shore's troopers, said his unit is "tremendously
understaffed" and that he has requested additional manpower.
-
- "Right now we're just running from call to call,"
Koushel said. "We can't even be pro active anymore."
-
- Koushel said most of the vehicles involved in accidents
that kill and injure fail to meet Virginia highway safety standards. He
called it "a mockery" of the state's vehicle registration law.
-
- Tennessee plates
-
- The state of Tennessee appears to be an enabler for many
of the illegal drivers.
-
- Up and down the Eastern Shore, in the work camps and
housing complexes where migrants and year-round laborers live, Tennessee
plates abound. Eastern Shore law enforcers suspect there is a flourishing
black market for Tennessee tags.
-
- There has been speculation of a mail-order operation,
but postmasters say they cannot discuss the nature of their mail. Officials
for the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation would not say if
they are looking into the Tennessee tag issue.
-
- Tennessee's titling and registration regulations are
among the most lax in the nation. Several migrants interviewed recently
said they got Tennessee tags because they were turned down by Virginia's
Department of Motor Vehicles.
-
- Tennessee does not require identification or proof of
insurance when a vehicle is titled and plates are issued, as long as the
motorist pays cash. Most states require identification or proof of insurance;
Virginia requires both.
-
- Tennessee state Sen. Bill Ketron said his state's legislature
has failed to close the loophole because of pressure from the powerful
auto insurance industry, which he says "wants to be able to cherry-pick
who they sell to," rather than being forced to insure high-risk drivers.
He plans to introduce a bill during the next legislative session, which
begins in January, that would toughen titling and registration requirements.
-
- The problem also has come to the attention of Virginia's
Migrant and Seasonal Farm Workers Advisory Board. The Tennessee license
plate matter is "a political hot potato," said Kenneth E. Annis
of Exmore, chairman of the 15-member board.
-
- Annis promised that it will be addressed at the board's
next meeting. The board, which meets four times a year, can recommend changes
to the governor or the General Assembly.
-
- Other regions with significant Hispanic populations,
such as Rockingham County in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and the Greensboro/Winston-Salem
area of North Carolina, have not seen significant numbers of cars with
Tennessee tags, say law enforcement officials there.
-
- But on the Eastern Shore, "Somebody is making it
very easy for these drivers to get Tennessee tags," Annis said. "It's
all very fishy."
-
- And deadly. In the 13 fatal accidents since 2002 involving
Hispanic workers, six vehicles bore Tennessee tags.
-
- Many of the Tennessee plates on the Shore were issued
in Union County, in the eastern part of the state near the Virginia border
- about a nine-hour drive from the Shore.
-
- Jim Houston, county clerk for Union County, said Tennessee
officials are aware of the problem. Houston said his office sees "quite
a few" Hispanics registering vehicles, "and I think the number's
increasing."
-
- When the topic of migrants titling vehicles came up at
a recent meeting of Tennessee clerks, Houston said, "One of the other
clerks said, 'Lord, we're overrun with them.,"
-
- Migrant population swells
-
- Each year, tomato pickers follow the jobs north from
Florida and Georgia to Virginia's Eastern Shore by the thousands.
-
- In July, the Hispanic population on the Shore swells
from fewer than 3,000 - those who live there year-round - to about 7,000.
The seasonal migrants stay until late October, sometimes into November,
then head south.
-
- In recent years, more workers have stuck around when
the growing season ended. The number of Eastern Shore laborers who stayed
behind and became full-time residents jumped from 177 in 1980 to 2,516
in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
-
- With its long growing season, the Shore has become one
of the nation's garden spots for tomatoes, which are now its biggest cash
crop. Virginia ranks third in the nation in tomato production, behind Florida
and California. Virginia's annual crop is valued at $60 million - 95 percent
of it grown on the Shore.
-
- Tomatoes must be picked by hand, a labor-intensive and
often sweltering task. The migrants from Mexico and Central America bring
a willingness and the skills that local laborers generally lack, said Jim
Belote, agricultural extension agent for Accomack County.
-
- "These guys are incredible athletes," he said.
"You,ll see one worker toss a basket of tomatoes to a guy on a truck
like a football player completing a pass, and then the first guy is filling
another basket.
-
- "They,re also very conscientious. They live in what
we would consider impoverished conditions so they can send most of their
salary to relatives back home."
-
- Migrants are indispensable to the large commercial tomato
growers that dominate the industry on the Shore. Jay Taylor, president
of Florida-based Taylor & Fulton Inc., one of the Eastern Shore's largest
growers, said his company hires between 650 and 750 migrants to pick tomatoes
and 150 more to package them during the height of the season at its Mappsville
operation.
-
- Jim Albright, who ministers to migrants on the Eastern
Shore for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond, said most Hispanics on
the Shore are law-abiding and hard working. Some are professionals, and
there are two Hispanic doctors, he said.
-
- Albright said migrants have been victimized by fly-by-night
entrepreneurs who promise to get them immigration documents, then disappear
with their cash. He said he knows it is difficult for many migrants to
obtain driver's licenses and vehicle registrations, which can lead them
to seek Tennessee tags.
-
- Most of the laborers live in Accomack County housing
complexes, motels and mobile home parks, some in squalid conditions. Two
of the largest trailer parks are named Dreamland 1 and Dreamland 2.
-
- One laborer, a resident of Dreamland 1 and a Mexican
immigrant, said weekend parties are a way of letting off steam after a
hot week in the fields.
-
- In 2003 and 2004, 128 of the 395 people arrested on DUI
charges on the Shore - 32.4 percent - were Hispanic. Steve Hearn, who heads
the Shore's Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program, said the courts are
sending increasing numbers of Hispanics through the program, and he has
begun conducting classes in Spanish on videotape and using a Spanish-speaking
interpreter for alcohol-awareness sessions.
-
- The carnage
-
- The mix of alcohol, unsafe vehicles and inexperienced
drivers has bred carnage along the back roads that connect farm fields
to the hamlets on the Shore. Those roads eventually lead to U.S. 13, which
bisects the long, narrow peninsula.
-
- When crashes occur, it is not uncommon for Hispanic drivers
- often intoxicated and unlicensed - to flee before troopers arrive. According
to State Police records, about a third of accidents involving migrant workers
are hit-and-run.
-
- That's what happened on Aug. 29, 2002. The driver of
a 1990 Dodge van apparently lost control on Va. 178 near Belle Haven. The
van veered off the road and struck several trees, then a utility pole.
-
- There were seven people in the van, and three of them
- all migrant laborers - died. Two passengers fled before police arrived.
The car was registered to Guadalupe Ramirez in Unicoi County, Tenn.
-
- Many accidents leave a curious paper trail. On Nov. 4,
2002, a 1986 Nissan Sentra overturned on Va. 609 in Accomack County, killing
the driver, Jesus Antonio Lopez.
-
- Lopez was intoxicated, according to police. The car he
was driving bore Tennessee plates and was registered to Michael Jones of
620 Pinewood Drive in Virginia Beach.
-
- Jones, contacted recently in Virginia Beach, said he
owned an ,86 Sentra when he lived at that address but that he had since
moved and given the car to a friend in Northampton County. Jones said the
friend later sold the car.
-
- Told that the car had been registered in his name in
Tennessee, Jones speculated that someone had found papers with his personal
information in the car and used them to get the Tennessee tags.
-
- "It's kind of scary to think that can happen,"
he said.
-
- A collision on Dec. 20, 2003, involved all of the volatile
ingredients: two cars carrying laborers, each bearing out-of-state tags,
crashed head-on. Investigators said both drivers had been drinking.
-
- Victor Herrera Munoz, a poultry worker, was headed south
on U.S. 13 in a 1985 Chevrolet Camaro with North Carolina plates when he
lost control, crossed the median and struck an oncoming Ford Escort, according
to a police report.
-
- When officers arrived, no one was in the driver's seat
of the badly crumpled Escort, which had Tennessee plates. An ambulance
transported Munoz to a hospital in Salisbury, Md.
-
- A few days later, police discovered what happened to
the driver of the Escort, Israel Gomez Sanchez. Friends of Gomez Sanchez
following in another car had pulled him from the wreckage, placed him in
their car and set out on an eight-hour drive to Charlotte, N.C., where
Gomez Sanchez had relatives.
-
- There, the injured man's family called an ambulance.
According to the medical examiner's report, Gomez Sanchez died at a Charlotte
hospital, nearly 14 hours after the accident.
-
- Accomack County prosecutors initially planned to charge
Munoz with manslaughter, but decided it would be difficult to convict him
because Gomez Sanchez may have lived had he received prompt medical attention.
-
- State Trooper Koushel said migrants often cannot be conclusively
identified when they,re stopped for a violation or involved in an accident.
Many, he said, are illegal aliens who carry fake or invalid driver's licenses.
Because of that, he said, many fail to show up in court.
-
- "It's almost like writing a ticket to a ghost,"
Koushel said.
-
- Sometimes when there's an accident involving a fatality
or serious injury, "we don't even know what embassy to contact,"
he said.
-
- It's three months into the harvest season, and State
Police recently have seen the effects of the migrant influx. So has Sentara
Norfolk General's air ambulance, the Nightingale.
-
- The helicopter regularly flies to the Eastern Shore to
ferry badly injured accident survivors to the Norfolk hospital. On the
evening of Sept. 17, the Nightingale made two trips to the Shore to retrieve
victims from accidents on U.S. 13.
-
- In the first crash, a man suffered a broken neck when
the Hyundai he was riding in pulled out into the path of a State Police
special investigator. The Hyundai's driver, a Hispanic worker, had a blood-alcohol
content more than double the legal limit for driving.
-
- In the second accident, a migrant worker was seriously
hurt while walking intoxicated along U.S. 13 just one mile from the earlier
accident. The van that struck him stopped, and the driver stepped out briefly
before speeding off. Witnesses identified the driver as Hispanic.
-
- Two weeks later, the Nightingale was again summoned to
the Eastern Shore, to pick up pregnant Marina Salazar, injured in the crash
on Seaside Road.
-
- On patrol
-
- Along desolate County Road near Parksley, state Trooper
Casey Lewis watched a Toyota Camry pull compliantly off the road at dusk.
The car's left tail light was burned out. The license plate would have
led a casual observer to conclude that the driver was from Tennessee, but
Lewis knew better.
-
- "I've gotten this guy before," she said, grabbing
a long black flashlight, securing a trooper's hat over her hair and stepping
out of the patrol car.
-
- The Camry's driver accompanied Lewis back to her cruiser
and pulled out his wallet. It contained a North Carolina ID card that said
he was Jose Luis Montes, a field worker from Mexico. But he had no driver's
license.
-
- On the floor of the passenger's side of the Camry sat
a brown paper bag containing a six-pack of beer bottles. Five were empty.
-
- It was not Montes, lucky night. He was only about 200
feet from the entrance to Dreamland 2, where he lives. Lewis cited him
for driving without an operator's permit, an open-container violation and
driving with defective equipment.
-
- A few minutes later, Parksley Police Chief Tommy Carpenter
pulled up and removed the Tennessee plates with a power screwdriver.
-
- "We'll take them back and destroy them," Lewis
said. "That way they won't get recycled on the Shore."
-
- Later that evening, Lewis was one of more than a half-dozen
officers who set up a DUI checkpoint in front of a funeral home on Parksley
Road, a two-lane stretch of rural blacktop. State Police operate checkpoints
once or twice a month. This time, in order to muster enough manpower, they
had to recruit local sheriff's deputies.
-
- From midnight to just before 4 a.m., the officers stopped
cars, vans and pickups in the sulfurous haze of orange roadside flares,
waving suspected violators into the funeral home parking lot. It was a
busy night. At one point, eight vehicles were parked at odd angles as officers
interviewed their drivers.
-
- At 12:23 a.m., an officer flagged a Nissan pickup with
Alabama tags and a black crouching tiger painted on the driver's-side door.
Two Hispanic men wearing white T-shirts got out. The driver had no license
or ID.
-
- The men became agitated as they milled around. When a
tow truck arrived to haul away the pickup, one of the men began shouting
"Discrimination! Discrimination!"
-
- As the wrecker pulled away with the pickup aboard, one
man flung himself on the flatbed tow truck and tried to roll under his
confiscated pickup.
-
- The ruse didn't work.
-
- "Come on down off there, amigo," one of the
officers ordered.
-
- There was little rest on this night for Randy Miller,
owner of Randy's Service Center in Parksley. He drives a red tow truck
with "23 HOUR SERVICE" emblazoned on the driver's door.
-
- "The half-hour is when I sleep," Miller deadpanned
as he loaded up for his fifth trip of the night.
-
- Miller said he maintains a small used-car lot made up
mostly of aging vehicles that were never claimed for the $125 towing fee.
They often are sold to other farm laborers, police said, thus making their
way back onto the highways - many of them sporting Tennessee plates.
-
- The fallout
-
- Every fatality leaves people dealing with its aftermath.
Georgie Smith is one of them.
-
- When her daughter, Debbie Thomas, was killed in a Christmas
Eve 2003 accident on U.S. 13, Smith was left to raise three grandchildren.
Six generations now live in the same two-story house in Painter.
-
- That Christmas, Smith recalls, people came by the house
not to celebrate the holiday but to offer condolences. Her grandchildren
received the gifts from their mom unwrapped, in a cardboard box.
-
- Thomas had been on her way home that night to wrap the
presents. She was less than a mile from her house in Nelsonia when her
Nissan Sentra was hit head-on by a Geo Storm with Tennessee plates traveling
the wrong way.
-
- The impact tore the shoes from Thomas, feet. She later
died at the hospital. Her daughter, Marquita, suffered only minor injuries
- thanks to a last-second maneuver by Thomas. State Police said she turned
the wheel to the right just before impact, taking the brunt of the collision
on the driver's side and probably saving Marquita's life.
-
- The driver of the other car, Narciso Garcia-Jimenez,
was seriously hurt. He was air-lifted unconscious to Sentara Norfolk General,
where State Police told hospital officials that they planned to obtain
a warrant, charging him with manslaughter.
-
- But later, when a nurse went to Garcia-Jimenez's room,
the bed was empty - except for a dangling intravenous line. He remains
a fugitive.
-
- Garcia-Jimenez worked at one of the sprawling poultry
plants in Accomack County. The Geo Storm he was driving was uninsured,
had no inspection sticker and was registered to another person at P.O.
Box 87, Newport, Tenn. - an address that frequently shows up on registration
papers carried by migrants, State Police said.
-
- Smith thought the driver of the car that struck her daughter's
had been killed in the crash. When told he had survived and had never been
arrested, Smith said she felt "angry, bitter and sad, all at once."
-
- Angry, but not surprised. Not long ago, a man crashed
a car near the family home on narrow, poorly lit Shell Bridge Road.
-
- When police arrived, they found the car smashed against
a tree. The driver was gone. So were the license plates.
-
- Staff writer David Gulliver contributed to this report.
-
- Reach Bill Burke at (757) 446-2589 or bill.burke@pilotonline.com.
-
- http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?
story=93408&ran=120909&tref=po
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