Prosecutor’s office: ‘Affluenza’ teen detained in Mexico

Authorities are charging Tonya Couch after they believe she helped her son Ethan run away to Mexico.

Couch was serving a sentence of 10-years probation for driving drunk and killing four people in 2013.

Wilson, Anderson and U.S. Marshal Richard Taylor had a joint news conference Tuesday after Couch and his mother were detained Monday evening in the Mexican beach resort town of Puerto Vallarta. The judge in Couch’s case sentenced the teen to probation.

The legal maneuver basically takes the deportation decision out of an immigration agent’s hands and asks a higher authority to make it, Hunter said Wednesday at a news conference in Houston.

The 120 days in jail won’t please those who think Couch deserves worse, but as the facts stand now, it is what the law allows. He said the two did not register when entering Mexico, but it was not clear where they came in.

The case dates to June 15, 2013, when Couch and some friends stole beer from a store and went for a drive with him at the wheel.

Anderson noted that Ethan Couch’s hair was “markedly different”.

Ethan Couch, the son of millionaire parents, made headlines during his trial when a psychologist testifying on his behalf claimed that he had fallen victim to “affluenza” due to his privileged upbringing. The so-called condition is not a medically recognized diagnosis.

It isn’t known exactly when the pair will be transported back to North Texas, but when it happens officials here say they know what to do with the pair.

Earlier, Ricardo Ariel Vera, the representative of Mexico’s immigration institute in the western state of Jalisco, said Tonya and Ethan Couch, 18, were held Tuesday at immigration offices in the state capital, Guadalajara.

Couch and his 48-year-old mother were tracked down and captured near Puerto Vallarta’s seafront promenade. Authorities were tipped off to their location after they used their phone to order a pizza to their condo, according to a police report issued by the Jalisco state prosecutors’ office. The Couches then moved to an apartment, and the agents set up a surveillance operation in the surrounding streets.

The immigration official spoke on condition of anonymity because he or she was not authorized to be quoted by name.

“They had planned to disappear”.

Anderson previously voiced his suspicions that Couch and his mother had made it out of the country, saying they had held a “going-away party”. This has angered many people as they feel justice was not served in this case.

Anderson said Couch and his mother apparently crossed the border in her pickup and drove to Puerto Vallarta.

Investigators received information from people who know the Couches and “dozens and dozens of calls of sightings” of them or their pickup truck, he said.

Twelve people were injured, including Sergio Molina and Solaiman Mohman, teens who were Couch’s passengers.

In a story December 29 about the detention of a Texas teen on probation for a deadly drunken-driving crash, The Associated Press reported erroneously the punishment that Ethan Couch could face if his probation is revoked.

The hunt for Couch began a few weeks ago after he missed a mandatory meeting with his probation officer.

Sharen Wilson, the Tarrant County district attorney, said if the case remained in juvenile court, Couch could not be locked up past his 19th birthday, in April. Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison term, but the court handed him a surprise sentence of mental health treatment and a decade of probation.

Tonya Couch faces a two- to 10-year sentence if convicted of hindering apprehension.

He pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication manslaughter and two counts of intoxication assault causing serious bodily injury.

Wilson is asking the local juvenile court judge – not the one who issued the original sentence – to transfer Couch to adult court.