Man Who Killed 2 in '03 Easter DUI Is Finally Behind Bars

Justice has been a long time coming for Florida man Henry de la Hoz, who killed a retired couple while driving drunk on Easter Sunday 16 years ago. Victor and Olga Lisabet had been on their way to a sunrise service in South Miami-Dade when they were hit by de la Hoz, who had been drinking at a sports bar, reports the Miami Herald. De la Hoz, who fell asleep in his car outside the bar and tried to drive home after waking up, was making an illegal left turn when he hit the vehicle carrying the Lisabets and other parishioners. He was captured at the scene and tested positive for alcohol. After five years of legal wrangling, he pleaded guilty to DUI in 2008—but fled the country before a hearing in which he was to have been sentenced to eight to 12 years in prison. The judge sentenced him to 12 years in absentia.

The US Marshals Service discovered in 2016 that de la Hoz was living in Costa Rica, and he was finally arrested last month with the help of Interpol. The fugitive had made a new life for himself and was married with a 10-month-old son, Fox reports. He had worked in construction and started a martial arts foundation to help low-income children. De la Hoz, who is now 46, fought extradition proceedings but was unsuccessful. On Monday, he will begin serving his 12-year sentence in a state prison. "I didn’t lose hope," the couple's son, Victor Lisabet, tells the Herald. "I was going to spend the rest of my life looking for him." He says that on the day they died, he had been going to inform his parents that his wife was pregnant with their first child. He named the baby girl Olga, after his mother.

(More fugitive stories.)