A Texas teenager who fled to Mexico with his mother in order to avoid jail time will be extradited to the U.S., law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Ethan Couch was caught with his mother, Tonya Couch, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico late Monday.
The teen was charged with four counts of manslaughter in 2013 after he drunkenly struck and killed four pedestrians in his pick-up truck in June of that year. One of several friends that were packed into the truck was thrown from the vehicle and paralyzed.
Ethan Couch then evaded jail after his attorneys argued he was too privileged to know right from wrong before the incident.
“What we suspected all along in confidence was that they planned to disappear, that they even had something akin to a going away party before they left town,” said Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson at a press conference Tuesday morning.
Anderson said authorities were able to focus their search on the Puerto Vallarta neighborhood where Ethan and Tonya Couch were arrested after receiving “concrete information” on Christmas Eve.
“The marshals are working to get them back here to the states, at which point Ethan will be taken into custody and put in our juvenile facility here in Tarrant County,” Anderson said, adding that Tonya Couch will also be arrested upon her arrival in the U.S. for her role in helping her son escape.
During the 2013 case, a psychological expert argued Ethan Couch suffered from “affluenza” given his parents’ wealth, and was thus unable to associate consequences with his negative actions. Instead of sentencing Ethan Couch to jail time, as prosecutors requested, a Tarrant County judge ordered the teen to enter rehabilitation for alcohol abuse and placed him on probation for 10 years.
A video clip posted to social media on Dec. 2 appeared to show Ethan Couch playing beer pong with friends at a party. Authorities quickly said they were investigating the footage. If the teen was caught consuming alcohol, he could have had his probation revoked and faced up to a decade in prison.
Nearly two weeks later, Ethan Couch and his mother were listed as missing persons after the teen’s probation officer was unable to contact him. They were thought to have fled the country to avoid the consequences of Ethan Couch’s alleged breach of probation.
The Texas district attorney’s office said Tuesday it planned to move Ethan Couch’s case into the adult criminal justice system. He is now 18 years old, although he was 16 at the time of the accident that prompted the “affluenza” case.
