A grand jury in Texas has indicted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer accused of striking an immigrant with an unmarked SUV.
Mario Alberto Morales, 33, surrendered to authorities Monday, days after being charged with aggravated assault involving a deadly weapon.
Investigators say surveillance footage shows Morales pursuing and running over Miguel Parra Hernandez in an unmarked vehicle in a Houston parking lot on October 10. Hernandez survived.
According to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, Hernandez, a 48-year-old construction worker, was fleeing when the vehicle struck him during the pursuit.
Hernandez suffered a broken leg and remains in federal custody at a rehabilitation facility, District Attorney Sean Teare said. At a news conference announcing the indictment, Teare presented body-camera footage from the encounter as well as a 911 call allegedly made by Morales.
ICE has maintained that Hernandez moved into the SUV’s path. Teare, however, said the video evidence does not support that explanation.
“The evidence we have in this case is as clear as any that I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated,” Teare said.
Morales’s lawyers reject that account, calling the collision an accident and accusing the district attorney of using the case as a political attack ahead of the midterm elections.
Mario Alberto Morales, 33, surrendered Monday after being accused of running over Miguel Parra Hernandez in Houston, Texas, on October 10
Surveillance footage appeared to show an unmarked SUV following a man who was running away
“Officer Morales is an Army veteran. He was sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States,” his attorney, Michael Wynne, told reporters.
Wynne alleged that Teare intentionally announced the indictment on Friday, the final day of early voting, in order to shape the news cycle.
Morales’s other attorney, David Lindenmuth, told ABC 13 that the incident was “clearly just an accident” and accused officials of creating a criminal case “out of thin air.”
Both Lindenmuth and ICE have said Morales never deliberately struck Hernandez.
“Mr. Morales is truly a good man, a former member of our military, that has given his entire life to public service either for his country or in or adjacent to law enforcement,” Lindenmuth told The Associated Press.
Teare has denied that the prosecution is politically motivated. He is also seeking to move the case into federal court.
“We’ll press this case and litigate it the way the framers designed it, and that is in a federal forum,” Teare said, according to ABC 13.
Lindenmuth said Morales had served as an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer for just over a year.
Morales’s lawyers describe the incident as an “accident” and say the indictment is part of a political smear campaign before the midterm elections
Parra Hernandez suffered a fractured leg, along with nerve damage and continuing pain, according to his lawyer
He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Representatives for Texas 34th District, according to Ballotpedia.
Parra Hernandez has lived in Harris County for more than 30 years and did not have a deportation order or criminal background, according to Teare.
He was in a vehicle that ICE tried to stop. He jumped out and was followed by Morales, who was in a Jeep Cherokee. Previously released surveillance video shows the Jeep speed over a median and drive toward Parra Hernandez as he ran away.
Morales’s body camera footage that Teare played Friday showed the officer making a few sharp moves with the steering wheel before the SUV shakes.
Morales stopped the vehicle, then got out and turned toward Parra Hernandez, who was several feet away. Parra Hernandez was on the ground and grabbing his leg, yelling in pain.
Morales was heard saying: ‘He got hit with a car, bro.’ It is not clear to whom he is talking.
‘I was coming in and I hit him with the car,’ Morales said after another ICE officer arrived.
In a 911 audio recording in which Morales requested an ambulance, Parra Hernandez can be heard yelling. Morales told the operator: ‘He’s fine. He’s just complaining of pain.’
Morales’s other attorney, David Lindenmuth, told ABC 13 that the incident was ‘clearly just an accident’ and that officials ‘invented a crime out of thin air’
District Attorney Sean Teare, however, said: ‘The evidence we have in this case is as clear as any that I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated’
Parra Hernandez told deputies that he believed a police officer was stopping the vehicle he was in, but got scared and fled when the man started putting on a mask.
He repeatedly told deputies that Morales ‘threw the car at me,’ according to a Harris County Sheriff’s Office incident report, reviewed by the AP.
Morales told deputies he did not intentionally hit Parra Hernandez. He acknowledged that he did not brake before hitting Parra Hernandez and said he was trying to avoid another truck in the parking lot.
Body camera video indicated that Morales had two other suspects in custody in his backseat, according to the report. But the deputy wrote that Morales told them there was no one else inside.
‘From the beginning, the video told a different story than what was offered by the agency,’ Parra Hernandez’s attorney, Kim Bruno, said Friday, adding that her client has suffered not just fractures in his leg, but nerve damage and chronic pain.
After Parra Hernandez was taken into custody, ICE released a photo of another man, Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, and said he was the target of the operation that day.
ICE said he was seen entering a vehicle with Parra Hernandez.
Family members of Parra Hernandez said they had never heard of him. FIEL, an immigrant rights group in Houston that has been working with the family, said Mendoza-Cervantes’ daughter told them her father has been dead since 2017.
Parra Hernandez’s sister holding a sign at a press conference on Wednesday. Parra Hernandez told deputies that he believed a police officer was stopping the vehicle he was in, but got scared and fled when the man started putting on a mask
ICE claimed another immigrant was the subject the operation and that he got into Parra Hernandez’s vehicle. However, his family said they do not know the man. The other man’s family also said he died in 2017
Teare’s office has previously said its investigation has not found that Parra Hernandez and the man ICE identified as Mendoza-Cervantes were in a vehicle together, contrary to ICE’s statement.
ICE has not responded to claims that the suspect they were looking for has been dead for years.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Morales and Parra Hernandez’s lawyers and ICE for comment.