13-year-old Mexican girl says smuggler ignored plea to save drowning family, kicked her

Mexican girl: Smuggler ignored plea to save family

EL CENTRO, Calif. — Cecilia Cid-Contreras remembers waking up underwater, unable to breathe. A migrant smuggler had just plunged a GMC Suburban packed with about 20 suspected illegal immigrants into a canal, including Cid-Contreras’ parents and 10-year-old brother.

After swimming to a bank, the 12-year-old pleaded with the smuggler to save her family.

He refused and kicked her once in the stomach, Cid-Contreras, now 13, told jurors Thursday in Imperial Superior Court.

Cid-Contreras, whose family died in the wreck, is a key prosecution witness against Alejandro Toribio Gama, a 16-year-old Mexican accused of driving the Suburban into a canal in July 2008, killing six passengers. Toribio Gama is charged as an adult with murder. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

His attorney, Benjamin Salorio, maintains that Toribio Gama was not the driver. And even if he was, it still wouldn’t justify murder charges, Salorio said.

Prosecutor Jill Cristich asked Cid-Contreras to remember what she told the driver while she and other survivors waited on the bank for about 40 minutes.

“To help get my family back,” she replied.

In a potential setback for prosecutors, the girl said she could not identify the driver in the courtroom, with Toribio Gama sitting a few feet from her. She also didn’t remember identifying the defendant in a photo lineup a few days after the crash.

Cid-Contreras recounted the end of her family’s journey from a village in central Mexico to California’s Imperial Valley, about 120 miles east of San Diego — a tragic tale of the enormous risks that some migrant smugglers take to elude authorities. She spoke quietly and in short sentences, showing no emotion.

She remembered kneeling on the floor of the front passenger seat, below a guide, as the driver accelerated to escape Westmorland police. Sirens were on.

Passengers demanded that the driver slow down and said he was crazy. She heard nothing from her brother, Juan Manuel, who was behind her, laying across women’s laps. Her mother was seated in the middle row. Her 40-year-old father and other men were laying down in the back.

“I was yelling to reduce the speed,” Cid-Contreras said in Spanish through a translator.

“Shut up already,” the driver replied.

The police ended their pursuit after about five minutes but the driver continued at a high speed for about 10 minutes before crashing, Cid-Contreras said.

The girl testified that she waited to cross the border with her family at a hotel in Mexicali, Mexico. Joined by another couple, they climbed a fence at night with a ladder. Guides gave them life jackets and pulled them across a river, floating on their backs.

They hid among bales of foliage, possibly alfalfa, after sunrise and were then driven to a shaded area near a river. The Suburban picked them up and drove into the night.

Cid-Contreras resumes her testimony Friday. She lives in Mexico with her grandparents.