Speed, alcohol thought to be factors in fatal Merrillville crash
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By Brenda Walker
There’s http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2398 preventable carnage to report on America’s roads, due to America’s open borders: in this case a drunk-driving illegal alien living in Indiana, Mario Cardena, killed three innocent citizens (and himself) in a horrific crash that left three twisted vehicles indicating the force of the impact.
Friends and family mourned the death of a prominent attorney, a young couple soon to be married and a Mexican immigrant who had long struggled with a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=313 problem — all four of them killed in three-car collision Wednesday near the border of Merrillville and Winfield.
As Hough and Weiss pulled into the intersection of Randolph and 101st Avenue, Mario Cadena sped west, past a stop sign and into Hough’s Ford Explorer, driving the truck into Weiss’ Mustang. No one emerged alive from the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=427.
Merrillville police declined comment on the crash but said high speed was a factor. The Lake County coroner will not have results of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=256 reports for several days. Police sources say they believe Cadena had been drinking, and a beer bottle was on the front seat of his ruined Jeep Cherokee at the police impound yard.Stephen Hough, 26, and Amy Bartelmey, 25, had planned to be married soon, and he was about to graduate from Purdue with a degree in public relations. She had a two-year-old son from a previous relationship.
Another victim in a separate vehicle was a well known local attorney Garry Weiss, 53, who is survived by his wife Cindy and two teenage children: Speed, Alcohol Factors In Collision That Killed Four.
“He was the love of my life. Everybody loves him. He just … he was perfect. No, not always perfect, but a wonderful husband, wonderful father, wonderful lawyer, wonderful friend, son, brother … there’s not enough to be said about him,” his wife, Cindy Weiss, said. “I love him and I miss him.”
The killer is also dead, so there will be no trial and public exposure of his previous arrests — he is another criminal foreigner who should have been earlier punished and then deported to his legal home, an act of justice that would have saved his own and three other lives. He had previously been arrested for drunk driving, so this crime was not unforseeable: Driver in fatality had long history.
Cadena was charged with driving without ever having been issued a license and driving while intoxicated after a 2001 arrest by Lake County Sheriff’s police.
A plea deal with prosecutors reduced the drunken driving charge to reckless driving, and Cadena was given a suspended jail sentence of 180 days and paid $480 in fees and fines.
In October 2003, Cadena was pulled over by State Police for unsafe lane movement and driving while intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level above 0.15 percent — nearly double the 0.08 percent required for a drunken driving charge. Cadena again reached a plea deal with prosecutors and received a suspended sentence of one year by Judge Julie Cantrell.
Cantrell also saw Cadena in court in June 2006, when he was charged with driving 77 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per hour zone, failure to register his vehicle and driving without a license.
It’s a situation that is painfully similar to many others. Had Judge Cantrell and the rest of the justice system not been weak in dealing with an obviously dangerous man, this terrible crime could have been prevented.