Fred Fry International: Never Push Your Luck II

Don't you hate it when the bad guy gets away? Me too, which is why I love stories when justice finally catches up to them. Take these two criminals who got much more than they bargained for:

Horn fatally shot the burglars, two illegal immigrants from Colombia named Diego Ortiz and Miguel de Jesus. Stephanie Storey, De Jesus' fiancée, wants to see Joe Horn prosecuted.

"This man took the law into his own hands," she said. "He shot two individuals in the back after having been told over and over to stay inside. It was his choice to go outside and his choice to take two lives." - ABC News

It was the 911 dispatcher who told him to not go outside. But Mr. Horn was not about to let these two burglars get away. So he went outside when he saw them coming out. Told them not to move and shot them dead when they did.

One of them was engaged as noted in the quote above. I wonder what she was thinking in how this guy would make a suitable husband:

“I knew it was getting hard for them,” said Ms. Storey, 39, a medical assistant from Katy, west of Houston. But she said she doubted that Mr. DeJesus, an avid salsa dancer who had courted her on and off for seven years and wore paint-splattered clothes to job hunts outside the Home Depot, had made a career of theft. But she said she knew he had another identity and false Puerto Rican papers; his real name was Hernando Riascos Torres.

“If this was something he did,” she said, “he would have money and jewelry, and he never did.” - NY Times

This illegal alien had been here for at least seven years. The Times story also mentions that he was sentenced to prison in the US at least once and was also deported.

Capt. Bud Corbett of the Pasadena Police Department said Mr. DeJesus was convicted on drug charges in 1994 and sentenced to 25 years before being ordered deported 5 years later, though Ms. Storey questioned whether he ever left. - NY Times

Clearly, it was a mistake to come back. His partner in crime also had a number of relationships, and children that he didn't seem to care to much about:

Ms. Storey said Mr. Ortiz was separated from his wife, who had their baby daughter, and had a relationship with a married woman. The Houston Chronicle last week quoted a woman who said she had been living with Mr. Ortiz and described him as “a very good guy, a sweet man.” The woman said he also had a son and daughter in Colombia. - NY Times

This guy was pretty good at hurting all those he came in contact, not just his victims. Now his three children will not have a father, not that he was much good for them while alive as he seems to have left them all behind already.

He and his co-criminal made at least four other big mistakes:

1. Entered the US Illegally
2. Presented fraudulent identity documents, claiming to be American Citizens
3. Were seen entering a house through a window.
4. Failed to escape before Mr. Horn shot them dead

Well, they will not be making any more mistakes. Nor will they steal from anyone else again. So our society wins.

There is one technicality in all this in that Mr. Horn is facing serious charges because the shooting did not take place on his own property, but on his neighbor's property. I suspect that he will eventually be acquitted, but it will surely be a painful legal process to get to that point. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up being sued by relatives of the criminals as well. The question is, will they do anything about the illegal aliens they identify in this investigation. My guess is no.

There are a couple other issues here, such as this would not have happened if the guys coming out of the house were white, and that they were shot in the back. Personally, I think they are irrelevant. The basic fact is that for some reason these two men decided to break into another person's house. This direct act on their part prompted the chain of events that resulted in their deaths.

As a side benefit, it appears that this case has brought out a scam where illegal aliens are using fake Puerto Rico birth certificates to get Texas drivers licenses. If Texas DMV's electronic records are worth anything, they should be able to quickly identify all the records with a Puerto Rico place of birth to investigate them for fraud as well.

As a reminder, this image links to a summary of how many illegal alien criminals are well known to law enforcement as they are arrested many times. This needs to stop. As noted above, Mr. DeJesus was sentenced to 25 years in jail, but was released after only 5. Had he been made to serve his time, instead of the US trying to pawn him off back on his own country, he would still be alive, albeit in jail.