Mystery surrounds van driver in Cottonwood bus crash

MARSHALL, MINN. - The van driver who witnesses say plowed into a school bus, killing four children, appeared in court Friday to face vehicular homicide charges. But authorities still aren't sure who she is, saying she's in the country illegally and using a phony name.

Sitting in a wheelchair with a broken leg Friday in Lyon County District Court, the woman said her name was Alianiss Nunez Morales. She said she'd been working in a Cottonwood, Minn., cabinet shop and living with her boyfriend in a trailer in nearby Minneota until they broke up Tuesday, the day of the crash.

But federal immigration investigator Claude Arnold said Morales is not the woman's name, and she is not revealing her identity. He said that she is here illegally, probably from Mexico.

About 5:45 p.m. Friday, agents from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency searched the trailer in Minneota where the woman had reportedly been living with a male friend. Also on hand were Minneota police and investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the State Patrol.

"ICE is executing a search warrant in relation to the investigation into the crash and her identity," said State Patrol Cpl. Al Uecker, who declined to provide more information.

The charges are stoking the emotionally charged immigration debate, with the editor of the Marshall Independent newspaper, Dana Yost, saying he's been swamped with angry e-mails from across the country.

More than two dozen immigrants' rights activists met in St. Paul on Friday, urging people to concentrate on the grieving families, not politics.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty's spokesman, Brian McClung, said: "Right now we are focused on the needs and concerns of the families who have experienced loss as a result of this tragedy. The governor continues to strongly believe that we should do more to crack down on illegal immigration."

Checking in Puerto Rico

ICE spokesman Tim Counts said that the woman has been of "minimal helpfulness" to investigators, but "we will get to the bottom of matters."

Lyon County Attorney Richard Maes told the judge that U.S. immigration investigators located an Alianiss Nunez Morales in Puerto Rico. When they showed pictures of the woman in the Lyon County jail to that woman's grandparents in Puerto Rico, they said the jailed woman was not their granddaughter.

Maes asked a judge to hold the woman without bail because of concerns about her identity. But Judge Leland Bush set bail at $400,000, or $200,000 with a number of conditions, noting none of the state charges involved using false identification.

She has been charged with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the deaths of Jesse Javens, Hunter Javens, Reed Stevens and Emilee Olson, as well as running a stop sign and having no driver's license. Her next court appearance is set for April 21.

"She's grief-stricken about the accident," said her attorney, Manuel P. Guerrero of St. Paul. "She's hurting about what happened to the kids."

According to the criminal complaint, the woman said she'd never been at the intersection of Hwy. 23 and County Road 24 before. Through an interpreter in the hospital, she told a state trooper that she stopped and the "bus came on to her."

The crash site is about 140 miles west of the Twin Cities.

Witnesses, including bus driver Dennis Devereaux, offered a different account, saying she "went airborne" over the railroad tracks and slammed into the side of the bus, which tipped over and slid into an oncoming pick-up truck.

Larry Moat told police he was driving behind the school bus and saw the van "moving at a fairly good speed" before it ran the stop sign and hit the bus near its rear wheels. James Hancock, the pick-up driver, said he also saw her run the stop sign and hit the bus.

Bus driver's account

Authorities released Devereaux's interview with state troopers, providing the bus driver's first public account of the crash. He said he noticed the maroon van "was going way too fast ... and the next thing I knew I had a trombone and a kid laying on top of me. ... We were just on our side and skidding and I was hanging on."

Devereaux said at first he thought the van had only clipped the bus' bumper, but he realized things were much worse when he noticed a radiator and an engine underneath him.

"The hood was open and there's kids screaming," he told investigators. "There was oil all over the place and I thought the bus was going to start on fire ... and maybe explode."

When an investigator asked Devereaux about the van's speed, he replied: "I'm thinking 45 to 55 miles per hour. It was booking ... I don't think it slammed on its brakes at all."

Devereaux has driven the route for nearly three years and said his own daughter takes the bus in the morning, but went separately to day care Tuesday afternoon.

After the crash, the driver said he started handing kids out through the roof hatch and window to passersby who stopped to help.

According to state records, Morales has a Minnesota identification card but not a valid driver's license. She pleaded guilty in June 2006 to driving without a license and paid a $182 fine.

Immigration officials said they are unsure whether she is, as was initially thought, the person who was arrested in Montevideo in 2006 for driving without a valid license.

One neighbor in Minneota, Michal Long, said there was often loud partying in the white trailer where the woman lived, but when Long threatened to call police, they obliged and quieted down.

School to be closed Monday

Lakeview School, which the students attended, will be closed Monday for the funerals of brothers Jesse Javens, 13, and Hunter Javens, 9, both of Cottonwood. Classes were called off Wednesday, but have been held the last two days.

Emilee Olson, 9, of Cottonwood, will be buried Sunday afternoon. Services for Reed Stevens, 12, of Marshall, will be held Thursday.

Stevens' brother is among 14 others who were injured, but one student was discharged Friday from Avera McKennan hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Five patients are still there, including Hancock, who is listed in fair condition, said Avera McKennan spokesman Kenyon Gleason. He said one student was in serious condition, two students were in fair condition, and one student was in good condition. Another student at Mayo Clinic in Rochester was also reported in fair condition.

The woman in jail faces up to 10 years on each of the four vehicular homicide charges.

"It really doesn't matter what they're going to give her," said Todd Baune, a Cottonwood resident. "It ain't going to bring those kids back."

cxiong@startribune.com • 612-270-4708 curt.brown@startribune.com • 612-673-4767