An undocumented immigrant accused of causing a fatal drunken car crash in Florida was deported earlier this month, leaving families of the victims feeling they had been denied justice. Erwin Rommel Recinos Zuniga, 28, was on house arrest following the 2022 West Flagler incident that claimed the lives of Paola Sabillon, her boyfriend Jason Meza, and his cousin Giselle Reyes. He was sent back to Honduras on September 6th.
He gets deported. He’s living. He’s sleeping. He is seeing his family. My sister stopped growing at 19 years old,” Paola Sabillon’s sister, Miriam Castillo, told NBC Miami.
I have lost the little bit of faith in the justice system,” added Sabillon’s sister Jailene Najera.
Before being arrested on immigration charges, records show Zuniga had violated the rules and regulations of the Monitored Release Bureau – House Arrest Program. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that “Zuniga was an unlawfully present Honduran national who was removed Sept 6.
At the time of his deportation, Zuniga was facing multiple charges for the fatal 2022 crash, including three counts of DUI manslaughter and three counts of reckless vehicular homicide. Prosecutors allege that he was driving at a speed of 126 mph in a 40 mph zone when he lost control of the car and crashed into a gas station sign.
Zuniga had a blood alcohol level of 0.123 and had THC in his system, according to police. Witnesses stated that they saw Zuniga consume five or six shots of whiskey before getting behind the wheel to drive four others to a nearby club. Sabillon, Meza, and Reyes were killed, while a fourth passenger was critically injured.
Prosecutors claim both they and the victims’ families were not informed about Zuniga’s deportation until after he had already been sent back to Honduras. State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle stated that “this deportation, which robbed the victims’ families of justice, could have been avoided had those overseeing his community supervised release simply notified the court and the state attorney’s office of their intention to release him.
The families of the young victims and the people of Miami-Dade County understandably feel cheated by this type of governmental failure.
While it remains unclear what the next steps will be, Rundle’s office said they would work with federal authorities to bring Zuniga back to Miami to stand trial. Neither the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office nor the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which oversees house arrest programs, responded to requests for comment.
