A Texas judge significantly lowered the bond amount for the mother of a teenager accused of killing four people in a 2013 drunk driving accident who later fled with her son to Mexico.
Judge Wayne Salvant said Monday he would drop Tonya Couch’s bond more than 92 percent, from $1 million to $75,000.
Couch was accused of assisting her 18-year-old son, Ethan, with fleeing the country after he violated his probation and may have faced jail time for his actions.
“We’re talking about a third-degree felony here — not capital murder. Let’s look at it for what it is,” Salvant said during the court proceedings, according to news reports.
Ethan had been placed on probation for 10 years for his involvement in a deadly accident three years earlier.
The “affluenza teen” — a term his trial lawyers used as a defense for how the rich teen was too spoiled to understand good from bad — was found with his mother in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, by U.S. officials last week.
Mexican authorities deported his mother to Texas. Her son filed paperwork requesting that he remain in Mexico.
In Couch’s court hearing Monday, her other son, Steven McWilliams, testified that she could not afford to pay the $1 million bond.
The judge dropped her bond on the conditions that she reports to a probation officer, takes drug and alcohol tests, and pays back $3,000 for costs relating to her extradition from Mexico.
