Mexican national sentenced to 21 months in prison for illegally re-entering country after fatal DUI case

A 30-year-old Mexican national was sentenced Tuesday to serve 21 months in federal prison for illegally re-entering the country after killing a woman in a 2005 Lawrence drunken-driving crash, federal prosecutors said.

Adan Cruz-Santos pleaded guilty in February to illegally re-entering the country as a convicted felon after he was arrested in 2011 and convicted of his third DUI in Douglas County.

Cruz-Santos was deported in February 2010 after serving prison time for voluntary manslaughter and DUI. He struck and killed Jodie Hatzenbihler, a 25-year-old Olathe nurse, early on April 9, 2005, as she was crossing Sixth Street. That was his second DUI conviction.

He was arrested last September in Douglas County on suspicion of drunken driving and gave officers an alias, Alvro Altamino-Cortez, but Eve Kemple, an assistant Douglas County district attorney, compared his current mug shot with an older one to help discover he was Cruz-Santos. Immigration officials also used fingerprints to confirm his identity.

He eventually pleaded no contest to his third DUI conviction for the September traffic stop and spent 90 days in the Douglas County Jail in that case before he was transferred to federal authorities.

U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia in Kansas City, Kan., sentenced Cruz-Santos Tuesday morning in the federal case. According to his plea agreement, he also faces presumptive mandatory deportation after serving his federal sentence.