A Honduran migrant is facing theft charges in Mexico after he allegedly stole a police vehicle to quickly reach the Texas border.
The case took place this week in San Nicolas, part of the Monterrey Metropolitan area, when Municipal Transit Police Officer Juan Francisco Esquivel got out of his vehicle to direct traffic. The officer stopped at a busy intersection along Manuel Barragan Avenue to direct traffic around a stalled tractor-trailer.
Honduran migrant Billy Side Sánchez Padilla, 25, allegedly saw that the officer had left his vehicle unlocked with the keys in sight. Sanchez jumped in and sped away to reach the Texas border, however, he took a wrong turn a headed south–straight into official custody.
The migrant told police that he had been traveling through Mexico for a week and wanted to reach the border as soon as possible.
Gerald “Tony” Aranda is an international journalist with more than 20 years of experience working in high-risk areas for print and broadcast news outlets investigating organized crime, corruption, and drug trafficking in the U.S. and Mexico. In 2016, Gerald took up the pseudonym of “Tony” when he joined Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project. Since then, he has come out of the shadows and become a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.