The Guatemalan immigrant accused of killing a National Football League player and his Uber driver in a car crash was charged in federal court Tuesday with illegally re-entering the country after having previously been deported.
The man, Manuel Orrego-Zavala, 37, was arrested early Sunday in connection with the accident on Interstate 70 in Indianapolis, in which Edwin Jackson, 26, a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts, and Uber driver Jeffrey Monroe, 54, were killed.
Orrego-Zavala, who hasn’t yet been formally charged in direct connection with the crash, is scheduled to appear at an initial hearing in Marion County Circuit Court on Wednesday.
Josh Minkler, the U.S. attorney for Indianapolis and southern Indiana, said in a statement Tuesday that after the crash early Sunday, Orrego-Zavala gave investigators the alias “Alex G. Cabrera” but that Homeland Security agents soon learned his real identity.
Manuel Orrego-Zavala. Indiana State Police via AP file
According to a federal criminal complaint, Orrego-Zavala was arrested by immigration authorities in October 2006 and was deported to Guatemala the following January. By March 2009, he was back in the United States illegally, and he was deported again two months later, with an order not to return for 20 years, according to the complaint.
Prosecution of the federal charges is on hold pending any state prosecution in connection with the fatal crash, Minkler said. If he’s convicted of the federal charges, Orrego-Zavala could face as long as 10 years in prison.
Authorities initially gave the suspect’s name as Orrego-Savala, but the U.S. attorney’s office on Tuesday rendered it as Orrego-Zavala.