A Sullivan City man has been charged with murder after losing control of his vehicle, rolling over “multiple times” during a high speed chase with law enforcement and crushing a person he was attempting to smuggle.
Police arrested Raul Botello, 24, after he lost control of a tan 2000 Ford F-150, killing Odilio Diaz Suchite on Nov. 2.
He is charged with murder, evading arrest with vehicle causing death and smuggling of persons and was booked into the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Center on Wednesday.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Lizandro Gonzalez attempted to conduct a traffic stop on Botello at 9:53 a.m. that day in the area of FM 2221 and Doffing Road but Botello didn’t yield to the trooper.
Instead, Botello began to attempt to evade Gonzalez by driving at unsafe speeds on 7 Mile Line Road, according to the affidavit.
Gonzalez later learned that Botello was attempting to smuggle 11 people illegally present in the United States, who later advised Gonzalez that Botello had instructed them to lay down in the cargo area of the vehicle in order to avoid detection, DPS said.
The document stated that Botello eventually “lost control of the vehicle and caused the vehicle to roll on its side multiple times.”
Gonzalez reported that seven of the people in the cargo area were ejected from the vehicle during the rollover, but Diaz “was crushed by the vehicle and died at the scene.”
“Trooper Gonzalez will testify that several of the [people] sustained major life-threatening injuries as a result of the crash,” the affidavit said.
Those that sustained injuries and Botello were transported to local hospitals by EMS for medical attention.
Botello remains jailed on $2 million in bonds.
