Feds accuse man of illegally re-entering country after deportation for 2005 Lawrence DUI fatality

Douglas County prosecutor discovers man was in the country

Adan Cruz-Santos

Assistant Douglas County District Attorney Eve Kemple

A federal grand jury in Kansas City, Kan., has indicted a Mexican national accusing him of re-entering the country illegally after he served his prison sentencing for killing a woman in a 2005 Lawrence drunken-driving crash.

And a Douglas County prosecutor is credited with discovering he was back in the country.

According to federal court records, prosecutors allege Adan Cruz-Santos, 29, had returned to Douglas County after he was deported in 2010 once he was paroled.

He also has picked up a new DUI conviction in Douglas County from earlier this year, although he was using a different name, Alvaro Altamirano Cortez. Douglas County prosecutor Eve Kemple, an assistant district attorney, discovered he was Cruz-Santos after she compared his mug shot and records with the 2005 case, District Attorney Charles Branson said. The federal indictment charges him under both names.

Chief Douglas County District Judge Robert Fairchild in August 2005 sentenced Cruz-Santos to serve five and a half years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and DUI. Cruz-Santos, who had been living in Lawrence in 2005, struck and killed Jodie Hatzenbihler, a 25-year-old nurse from Olathe, as she walked across Sixth Street early on April 9, 2005, after she left Cadillac Ranch, 2515 W. Sixth St.

That was his second DUI conviction, and according to Douglas County court records, he was charged with drunken driving again for an Aug. 21 incident this year. He pleaded no contest Oct. 27 to that new charge of a third DUI, which is a felony, in Douglas County District Court.

District Judge Kay Huff is scheduled to sentence Cruz-Santos on Dec. 8 in the new Douglas County DUI case that Kemple is prosecuting.

Cruz-Santos in February of 2010 was granted parole and was deported to Mexico because of his felony conviction, but federal authorities allege he had returned to Douglas County without reapplying for admission and gaining consent to return. No hearings have yet been set in the federal criminal case.