According to the Indiana State Police, a car accident occurred near the intersection of State Road 67 and County Road 550 East in Jay County on Tuesday afternoon around 4 p.m. The crash involved a truck and a van, resulting in the death of four individuals. The driver responsible for the accident has been detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Investigations by the authorities revealed that Gert Pretoruis, a resident of Geneva, Indiana, was driving eastbound on State Road 67 near County Road 550 East when he slowed down due to traffic congestion. Bekzhan Beishekeev, a resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was driving a semi-trailer truck also eastbound on State Road 67 but failed to stop. Instead, he abruptly changed lanes into the westbound lane and collided with a 2011 Chevrolet van driven by Donald Stipp, a resident of Portland, Indiana.
The Jay County Coroner’s office confirmed that the four victims who lost their lives in the accident were Henry Eicher (50), Menno Eicher (25), Paul Eicher (19), and Simon Girod (23), all from Bryant, Indiana. Stipp underwent surgery for a fractured arm and is currently in stable condition.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that the driver, Beishekeev, is a 30-year-old citizen of Kyrgyzstan who arrived at the Nogales port in Arizona on December 19, 2024, using the CBP One mobile application under the Biden administration and entered the United States after being granted parole.
In a statement, DHS announced, “On February 4, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued an immigration detention order for Beishekeev to the Jay County Jail, and he was arrested on the morning of February 5 with the cooperation of Indiana. He will remain in ICE custody awaiting immigration proceedings.”
The statement emphasized that “illegal immigrants often do not understand our traffic laws or even speak English but drive semi-trailer trucks on roads in the United States, which is extremely dangerous.”
In December of last year, ICE carried out Operation Highway Sentinel on California highways, arresting over a hundred illegal immigrant truck drivers from India, Mexico, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Russia, Georgia, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Honduras. At the same time, similar operations were conducted in Indiana, New York, and Oklahoma, resulting in the arrest of over two hundred illegal immigrant truck drivers with commercial driver’s licenses.
(Information sourced from a report by FOX NEWS)