11/26/2006 4:00:00 AM Act to stem tide ofillegal immigration
A judge has issued a felony warrant for the arrest of Joel Medina-Ortiz in the Oct. 28 stabbing in Prescott of 22-year-old Daniel Cook and the slashing of his brother, Lance.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Prescott Police probably never will bring him to justice because he's most likely back in Mexico. He was an illegal alien, as are the other four men police arrested in the case.
Everyone knows the story by now. Daniel and Lance Cook were trying to pull into the parking lot of a motel on Gurley Street when they got into an argument with two Hispanic men who were blocking the entrance.
Those men came back later with at least four others and, in the ensuing altercation, Daniel Cook suffered a fatal stab wound, and Lance Cook suffered a slashing wound on his arm.
Police subsequently arrested Carlos Medina Sixto-Gill, 24, Miguel Medina-Ortiz, 23, and Eric Ortiz-Hernandez, 19, and a 17-year-old juvenile on rioting charges.
And there we have the prime reason the Prescott City Council should approve its strongly-worded resolution on illegal immigration. And local governments throughout Yavapai County need to find ways to take charge of the illegal immigration issue rather than waiting for a worthless federal government to do it.
People who shouldn't be here in the first place have no business wreaking tragedy on our citizens and effortlessly slipping back out of the country to avoid justice.
This is a long way from the first time local authorities have dealt with tragedy inflicted by someone who then made it back across the border.
On Christmas Eve, 1998, a Ford Ranger plowed into a truck carrying 33-year-old Candice Adamson, her husband, and two sons one 5 and one 12. The crash killed Adamson and injured the rest of her family and a passenger in the Ranger. The driver of the Ranger, then 34-year-old Manuel Dera, disappeared shortly after the crash. Authorities now believe him to be in Mexico.
We at the local level can do a lot to fix this situation and put the heat on federal officials to help.
