A 21-year-old Indian man, identified as Jashanpreet Singh, has been accused of causing a deadly semi-truck crash in Southern California that resulted in the deaths of three people.
Singh, an illegal immigrant in the United States, faces charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated after crashing his Freightliner tractor-trailer into slow-moving traffic on a freeway in San Bernardino County, according to reports from US news outlets.
Singh is said to have entered the United States illegally in 2022, crossing the southern border. His first encounter with US authorities occurred in March 2022 in the El Centro Sector of California, where he was apprehended by Border Patrol agents. However, under the Biden administration’s “alternatives to detention” policy, Singh was released into the interior of the country while awaiting immigration hearings, rather than being detained.
The fatal crash was captured on the dashcam of Singh’s truck, showing the moment his vehicle collided with an SUV, killing at least three people and injuring several others. Among those injured were Singh himself and a mechanic who was assisting with a tyre change on another vehicle at the time of the incident. The identities of the three individuals killed in the crash have not yet been publicly released.
According to police reports, Singh failed to apply the brakes before colliding with the traffic jam. Authorities determined that he was under the influence of drugs at the time of the crash, with toxicology tests confirming his impairment. “He was eventually transported to the hospital, and he was checked out by the medical staff, and our officers determined he was driving under the influence of drugs,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez in a statement to media persons.
The US Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Singh lacks lawful immigration status in the United States. Following his arrest, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE) issued an immigration detainer against him, as reported by international news agencies. This detainer requests that local authorities hold Singh until he can be transferred to federal custody for immigration proceedings.
This incident marks the latest in a series of crashes involving illegal immigrant truck drivers in the US. In a similar case in August, another Indian immigrant, Harjinder Singh, was accused of causing a crash in Fort Pierce, Florida, that also claimed three lives. Harjinder Singh had reportedly entered the US illegally in 2018 through the southern border and later obtained a commercial driver’s license in California.
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