Miguel Parra-Hernandez was running from federal agents in a car park near Clay Road and Highway 6 in Houston on 10 October when an unmarked black Jeep Cherokee crossed a median and pursued him, surveillance video shows. The vehicle struck Parra-Hernandez, a 48-year-old construction worker, leaving him with multiple fractures to his right leg and an ankle injury requiring surgery.
In body-camera footage released on Friday, Parra-Hernandez told an officer: “You ran over me.” Mario Alberto Morales, the 33-year-old ICE officer who was driving the Jeep, can be heard telling a fellow agent: “I was coming in, and I hit him with the car.”
A Harris County grand jury has indicted Morales on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced on Friday. The indictment accuses Morales of striking Parra-Hernandez with the vehicle.
The charge places the central dispute before the criminal process. ICE has said Parra-Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle and called allegations that Morales intentionally hit him “reckless and false.”
Parra-Hernandez is a Mexican immigrant who has lived in Harris County for more than 30 years. He has no criminal record and had no pending immigration proceedings.
ICE said its agents had been looking for a man identified as Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, whom they believed was travelling with Parra-Hernandez. Mendoza-Cervantes’s daughter told The New York Times that her father died in 2017.
Teare said at a news conference: “The evidence that we have in this case is as clear as any that I've ever prosecuted or investigated.”
He also accused federal authorities of failing to cooperate with the inquiry. Teare said they removed the Jeep before local investigators could examine it for potential evidence.
A search warrant obtained by local media showed that investigators had not been granted access to the vehicle as of 23 October.
Teare is separately investigating the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE officer Gregory Feathers on 7 July.
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