Possible death penalty case

To get federal protection you have to know something seriously useful. This dude doesn't. That's why he's going to get 20+ years. He's the person who killed those people, not the cartel. They were engaging in human trafficking, he's the ####### who transported living breathing people with less care than we give produce.

Modern organized crime functions like modern business. It's much more horizontal and cellular than TV shows would have you believe. Person A wants to cross a border illegally so he goes and speaks to Person B about it. Person B is a people broker who refers Person A to Person C in exchange for a flat fee. Person C takes person A and smuggles them across the border to wherever this truck driver picked them up. Truck driver is person D who, for a fee, is supposed to transport Person A somewhere in the US or Canada.

No one in this entire structure is a member of Los Zetas. Person B and Person C pay Los Zetas for the right to do business in their city, and if they do not they go away and internet videos of them being dismembered arrive. Contractors and subcontractors who are specialists in one particular type of activity do 95% of the actual work while the top of the food chain super predators like Los Zetas get paid for having the monopoly on violence in the area. Most of the violence comes from the fact that the violence part of the business is SUPER competitive.

This is what every business would look like without a strong central government.

EDIT: And in reference to the OP IF the driver knew a member of LZ he'd be in big trouble. Good thing he doesn't. There is absolutely no chance he's ever spoken to anybody important. Nobody important would ever take the risk of meeting some random truck driver who is the point of the spear risk wise.

 

I hear yah

 

No. I'm fairly certain this guy is not well connected with any major cartel players. However I must admit there are similarities to one Gus Fring.

 

oh well

 

I'm reminded why a lock on the doors of a empty trailer in certain areas eliminates some risks

 

No resemblance to Gus Fring at all. Gus's trailer's reefer temp would have been set to 60 degrees and there would have been a cooler full of water bottles already in the trailer. You know... Like responsible villains do it. Jesus Christ this story is NOT about the evils of human trafficking... It's about the seriously stupid nature of some idiot truck drivers.

Sorry guys but the 20% of you who cause 95% of the problems are SO bad. SO BAD. The sheer amount of human suffering these kinds of people cause is absolutely staggering.

 

You don't know that for sure. He's got a pickup location, a delivery location and a contact number. If he's done this before perhaps they can get some meta data.

 

Driver in Texas immigrant-smuggling case had suspended license

8:36 PM EDT U.S.
CBS/AP


James Bradley Jr. should never have been driving the tractor trailer that carried roughly 100 illegal immigrants into San Antonio. Florida had suspended his commercial driving license back in April, CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports.

Bradley Jr. lost his commercial driving privileges after he failed to provide the state with a current medical card, which federal law requires commercial drivers to submit to show they are physically fit for the road.


Alexis Bakofsky, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, told The Associated Press it would have been illegal for him to have had an additional license from another state.

Authorities said Bradley's truck was discovered Sunday morning in a Walmart parking lot crammed with dozens of immigrants.

Ten people died, including 20 year-old Frank Fuentes, who graduated high school in Virginia but had been deported, Strassmann reports. More than a dozen survivors remained hospitalized Tuesday, some in critical condition.

Shane Foldin, the special agent in charge of San Antonio's Homeland Security office, is leading the criminal investigation.

"It's never just the driver by himself or herself," Foldin told Strassmann.


"These organizations simply consider these people a commodity. They don't think of them as people they look at them from a profit perspective," he said.


Frank Fuentes
CBS News
Bradley, 60, faces charges of illegally transporting immigrants for financial gain resulting in death, possibly punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

He has yet to enter a plea in connection with this disastrous tractor trailer run to San Antonio, and will be back in court on Thursday, Strassmann reports.

Florida records show that his medical card on file with the highway department expired on March 15 and he was notified to update it. He never did.

Bradley's fiancee, Darnisha Rose, told The AP that he is from Florida originally but had been spending most of his time in Louisville, Kentucky, as his health worsened. Bradley had diabetes that he hadn't properly treated, she said, and had to have a series of amputations, most recently the removal of his leg this spring.


Federal law requires commercial drivers to be screened by a doctor for serious medical conditions that might impair their ability to safely operate their vehicles.

"The medical card certification is extremely serious business. Drivers watch it like hawks because you can't drive a truck without it," said Kenneth S. Armstrong, the president of the Florida Trucking Association who reviewed Bradley's driving record for The AP. "When you're moving a 50, 60, 70, 80,000-pound vehicle along the road, we hold those people to a higher health standard than a typical passenger car driver."

James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Florida, left, arrives at the federal courthouse for a hearing, Monday, July 24, 2017, in San Antonio. Bradley was arrested in connection with the deaths of multiple people packed into a broiling tractor-trailer.
Eric Gay / AP
Armstrong said the lack of a valid commercial license would have likely been caught had Bradley gone through an inspection station or been stopped by law enforcement.

But Bradley had not been out on the road for months.

Rose said Bradley, a lifelong truck driver, left Louisville on July 14 for his first trip since his leg was amputated in May. He had worked for Pyle Transportation, a trucking company in Iowa, for several years, and was preparing to strike out on his own once he got a prosthetic leg this month, she said.

In February, he purchased a custom Peterbilt truck for $90,000 from a company called Outlaw Iron in Wisconsin, according to Justin McDaniel, the company's owner. McDaniel said he had never before met Bradley, who responded to an advertisement for the truck. Bradley came to Wisconsin to buy the truck, paid $50,000 cash and financed the remaining $40,000. The truck did not come with a trailer, McDaniel said.

"It's hard to believe it, just from meeting the gentleman, he was a super nice guy, very stand-up guy," McDaniel said. "I'm sure there's more to the story than what we're seeing."



Human trafficking survivors recall horror inside stifling trailer
McDaniel said Bradley showed the Florida driver's license when making the purchase.

Florida originally issued him a commercial license in 2004, according to state records. By then he already had a criminal history.

Bakofsky said the screening process for licensing commercial drivers focuses on their driving record and crimes related to traffic infractions.

In 1997, Bradley pleaded guilty in a felony domestic violence case in Colorado and was sentenced to two years' probation, said Rich Orman, chief deputy district attorney for the 18th Judicial District in suburban Denver. He had been arrested the year before after his wife, visibly injured, told police he "beat her up," an officer wrote in an affidavit.

"She continued to say that her husband also took a handgun, pulled the hammer back thus '####ing' it, pointed it at her and told her he was going to kill her," the affidavit says. His probation in that case was transferred to Florida.

Then in 1998 he was arrested in Ohio and extradited to Colorado for violating his probation, Orman said. Records show that at that time, Bradley also was wanted by a Texas agency for an unknown charge. Another probation violation complaint came in 1999, but Bradley wasn't arrested and returned to Colorado until 2003.



Human trafficking survivors cling to life in Texas
He was sentenced to three years in a halfway house, but he violated terms of that sentence -- he apparently left the facility to look for a job and never returned -- and in 2005 was sentenced to one year in a Colorado prison, Orman said.

He was released in 2007, according to the Department of Corrections, and remained on parole until 2009.

He has also been cited repeatedly over the years for violating federal motor carrier safety regulations in Iowa dating back to 1995. At least two of the tickets were for logging more hours than allowed. The most recent infraction came in April 2013, when he was ticketed for violating a rule that bars truckers from driving longer than 14 hours without a break. The citation shows that he was driving for Pyle Transportation. He was fined $127.50.

Rose defended her fiance as a good man who would always try to help people in need. She said he is beside himself over what happened and told her during a jailhouse call that he had no idea his trailer was packed with people until he left Walmart and noticed it rocking back and forth. He flung the doors open and found the people inside, some already dead and dying.

Court documents indicate he did not call 911. Authorities were alerted by store employees.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.




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