EDINBURG — A Mission man who hit and killed his 24-year-old wife with a vehicle following an argument was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday morning.
Erick Araujo Solache, 28, who entered a guilty plea in August after being indicted, has been sentenced to eight years in a state penitentiary for manslaughter, a second-degree felony, for the death of Karen Alexia Lopez.
According to state District Judge Noe Gonzalez, a second-degree felony is punishable by “no less than two, no more than 20” years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
“There was an agreement reached to an eight-year sentence in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” Gonzalez said.
Solache had been initially charged with murder.
On April 25, 2021, at around 11:29 p.m., deputies from the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office responded to the emergency room at the Mission Regional Medical Center regarding a suspicious situation.
According to a news release, Solache told authorities that he rushed his wife to the hospital after he found her injured on the canal bank near their home north of 2 Mile Line and East Goodwin Road.
It was there that investigators found evidence that confirmed medical staff’s findings in which Lopez had sustained multiple injuries from a motor vehicle.
When Solache was transported to the sheriff’s office, he provided a voluntary statement where he admitted to police that he ran over his wife after an argument, the news release said.
Solache wrote to Gonzalez in June and asked the judge for mercy due to being illegally present in the country, though his children are not.
In the letter, Solache said his wife’s death was an accident.
He said that he came to the U.S. so his children could have a better life and asked Gonzalez to sentence him to the least amount of time. He also reasoned that he would have to deal with immigration authorities after serving a time-served sentence.
Solache will be eligible for parole in 2025.
