Immigrants’ driver sentenced for wreck

? A man who admitted smuggling illegal immigrants in his pickup truck was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for a traffic wreck that killed three of his passengers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.

Fernando Tello Del Pilar, 22, of Veracruz, Mexico, was sentenced to 57 months by U.S. District Judge Monti Belot at a hearing Monday. He had pleaded guilty in June to one count of unlawfully transporting illegal aliens resulting in a death for the Feb. 21 crash near Rolla that killed three of the 19 passengers in the pickup truck Tello Del Pilar was driving.

The sentence was at the high end of federal guidelines and came after both the prosecutor and defense urged the judge to keep his sentence within those guidelines.

In his guilty plea, Del Pilar said he picked up 19 illegal immigrants Feb. 15 in Phoenix and transported them in a Ford F-150 pickup truck.