WaPo.com:
Amid a nationwide manhunt for a Texas teen — infamous for the “affluenza” defense that helped him avoid prison time following a fatal drunk-driving crash — authorities now say the 18-year-old’s mother has been listed as a missing person.
For the past week, U.S. marshals have been searching for Ethan Couch, who is wanted for a possible probation violation in a 2013 vehicular manslaughter case.
Authorities said in a statement Monday that his mother, Tonya Couch, 48, has been named a missing person “in all relevant national databases” and may be traveling with her son in a pickup truck.
“He continues to believe the law doesn’t apply to him, which is how he was raised,” Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said during a news conference, according to the Dallas Morning News. “If he has enough money, he can get out of it.”
Authorities have enlisted the public’s help in finding Tonya Couch’s pickup truck — a black 2011 Ford F-150 Harley Davidson edition. Authorities said it has 23-inch chrome wheels, “crease-like damage to the passenger side real panel” and a Texas license plate: BC50945.
In June 2013, Couch was driving his friends down a two-lane road in Fort Worth, about 30 miles from Dallas, and had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit and Valium in his system, authorities said.
He crashed into passersby who had stopped to help a stranded motorist.
Four people were killed.
Couch, who was 16 at the time of the fatal crash, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and assault while intoxicated, according to the Associated Press.
It was his trial that thrust him into the national spotlight.
His attorneys argued that he was a spoiled rich kid whose privilege prevented him from distinguishing right from wrong. Indeed, his family is reported to be worth millions, thanks in part to a booming sheet metal business. It’s their success — and the way they have handled it — that contributed to Couch’s reckless behavior, his attorneys argued.
They recommended a lesser sentence — and won.
Couch was sentenced to drug-and-alcohol-free probation for 10 years as well as time in a rehabilitation center. But the term was tricky. Under Texas law, because Couch was younger than 17 when he committed the crime, his case would remain in juvenile court until his 19th birthday — and then his sentence would disappear, said Sam Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office.
The prosecutor’s office filed a motion last month to have the case moved from juvenile court to adult court when he turns 19 next year, so that he would have to serve out his sentence.If there's one issue that should be uniting Americans everywhere, it's finding this spoiled, rich murderer.
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