Continued: Bus crash trial raises plenty of questions

 In a February instant, Olga Franco went from obscurity to a symbol in the national debate over illegal immigration.

Today, the Guatemalan woman is scheduled to go on trial in the Cottonwood bus crash that left four children dead, more than a dozen injured and shocked the state. Her trial promises to give a prominent place to the same questions of race, language barriers and assimilation that have surrounded the case from its start.

Franco's defense turns on the idea that authorities and translators botched the initial interviews with her and that investigators operated on an incorrect premise that she was the driver.

Franco's attorneys argue it was her boyfriend behind the wheel and he fled the scene because he, too, was in the country illegally. He has not been seen since.

Seating a jury could turn largely on questions about attitudes toward Hispanics.

Judge David W. Peterson agreed to move the trial from Marshall to Willmar, but the defense had wanted the case moved to the Twin Cities. Willmar, which is located in Kandiyohi County, the county with the third-highest percentage of Hispanics in the state, has had its own periodic tensions between longtime residents and Hispanic immigrants.

Elizabeth Boyle, associate professor of sociology and law at the University of Minnesota, said that history could have unpredictable consequences.

"It seems like probably living in that circumstance, there's not going to be very many people who don't have some opinion about migration, one way or the other," Boyle said. "But that could actually be a good thing. That might mean that people are more informed."

Collision and confusion

The facts of the case seemed straightforward.

The 28 children aboard the Lakeview School bus were done for the day, heading home on a bitter cold afternoon. A van broadsided the bus, tipping it onto its side and into a pickup truck.

When emergency workers arrived, they found Franco alone in the van and extracted her from the vehicle.

At issue is what happened next.

The judge recently ordered prosecutors and the defense to not discuss the case further prior to trial, but documents and earlier interviews outlined the two sides' arguments.

Authorities say Franco, using an alias, told investigators through an interpreter that she was the driver. The interpreter said Franco maintained she was stopped at the stop sign and the bus "came onto her." Under questioning the next day, however, Franco said through a different interpreter that her boyfriend was driving the van, but fled the scene after the crash. Tests on the van's two front air bags later showed DNA from an unidentified man but none from Franco.

However, Lyon County Attorney Rick Maes told the Marshall Independent in April that he was unaware of "any information that would even remotely suggest" Franco was not the driver.

Once officials determined Franco's real name, they learned she was in the country illegally and didn't have a license.

She has been charged with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the deaths of Emilee Olson, 9, Reed Stevens, 12, Jesse Javens, 13 and Hunter Javens, 9. She also faces 17 counts of criminal vehicular injury, driving without a license, a stop sign violation and giving a false name and birth date.

She and her boyfriend, whom authorities have identified as Francisco Sangabriel-Mendoza, also face federal identity theft charges.

The accident led to public outcry across the state and country, as well as online.

Within a week, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., sent a letter to immigration officials asking why no action was taken when Franco, using an alias, was convicted in 2006 of driving without a license.

National groups favoring immigration enforcement, as well as those advocating for immigrants, took notice.

"Cases like this make the arguments very concrete. And so they provide a way to make your point, whatever your point might be," said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the INS and now senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

Question of bias

Minneapolis defense attorney Joe Friedberg said it could be difficult to seat a jury.

Many potential jurors would "assume she's illegal if they saw her in the street," Friedberg said. "I'd go in presuming that it's a bias the jury would have against her."

Willmar, the location for the trial, has its own history with immigrants.

A Hispanic police officer recruited from Texas in 1990 to help smooth relations with the city's Hispanic community sued the city in 1992, claiming he had been the victim of repeated discrimination. The city denied the charges, though it disciplined one officer for making a racist remark. The parties settled the suit, and the officer resigned.

In 1995, a Hispanic advocacy group claimed the city was slow to eliminate safety hazards at a trailer park where more than 90 percent of the 600 residents were Hispanic. Willmar officials blamed the park's owner.

Last April, tensions rose again when federal agents arrested 49 people during four days of raids at homes and workplaces on charges that they were in the country illegally.

After the Cottonwood crash, Latinos worried about a backlash against immigrants, said Naomi Mahler, pastor at Paz y Esperanza Lutheran Church in Willmar.

"I think in the Latino community, there's a sense that everyone was quick to judge and blame this woman," Mahler said. Some wonder if there would have been more willingness to withhold judgment had the van driver been white, she said.

Still mourning

For some of those who lost children or saw them injured, questions about how or why Franco came to be in Minnesota illegally are secondary to the simple question of whether she caused the accident.

And regardless of its outcome, their pain will still be there when the trial is over.

Emilee Olson's family was reminded again of their glaring loss when they gathered over the Fourth of July. The empty space left between her mother and grandmother in the group photo was where the energetic 9-year-old would have been.

Emilee wouldn't have wanted to be left out, said her aunt, Terri Hutchinson.

"It'll never be the same," Hutchinson said.

If Franco wasn't driving, Hutchinson said, she doesn't want her in prison. But she feels little sympathy for her.

"We feel like if she hadn't gotten here illegally and lied ... maybe this wouldn't have happened. But no one knows that," Hutchinson said.

Beulah Lavoie, a neighbor of another of the crash victims, Reed Stevens, treated him like a grandson. Stevens grew gladioluses in her garden last summer. She looks out at the flowers and thinks of him.

"It's kind of hard to cope with it," she said. She's choosing to focus on her memories of Reed, not Franco, she said.

"We just hope that justice will be done," Lavoie said. "And it'll be over."

Staff writer David Peterson contributed to this report. Pam Louwagie • 612-673-7102