


Prosecutors said Ortega’s blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit at the time of the crash.Īfter he was sentenced, Ortega, who had an interpreter in court helping translate the proceedings from English to Spanish, asked to address the teens’ families. Mattle’s Toyota burst into flames after the accident, but police have said the collision caused their deaths before the fire started. The accident occurred at the intersection of Whitesburg Drive and Airport Road, after Ortega had fled in his truck from a Huntsville police officer who’d been called after Ortega hit another car in his apartment building parking lot. Ortega entered the plea before Circuit Judge Dennis O’Dell for the April 17, 2009, crash that killed Grissom High School sophomore Leigh Anna Jimmerson, 16, and her boyfriend, Tad Mattle, 19, a 2008 Grissom graduate. HUNTSVILLE, AL - The mother of one of two Huntsville teens killed when illegal immigrant Felix Ortega slammed into their car in 2009 told him in court today that she hopes he thinks about their deaths every day.įelix Ortega pleaded guilty this morning to two counts of murder for the traffic deaths of Tad Mattle and Leigh Anna Jimmerson and received a 15-year sentence as part of a plea agreement. Tad Mattle’s mother to Felix Ortega: “I hope every day you will think about them”, Huntsville Times Blog, August 30, 2010 Even so, the plea agreement seems weak punishment indeed for the preventable deaths of two young people with their whole lives ahead of them. It was acceptable to both families who presumably didn’t want to go through a trial where the horrific details of their kids’ deaths would be brought out. The prosecutor put together a deal where Ortega pleaded guilty to two murders in return for a 15 year sentence and eligibility for parole in 12.5 years. The couple died in a fiery crash in April 2009 when their car burst into flames after being struck by illegal alien Felix Ortega, who was drunk at three times the legal limit for Alabama.
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There are many tragic stories about the victims of illegal alien criminals, but it doesn’t get much worse than the deaths of Leigh Anna Jimmerson, 16, and her boyfriend, Tad Mattle, 19.
