A Harris County grand jury indicted ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales on Friday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors say the deadly weapon was his own SUV, and that he used it to deliberately run over a man who was running away from him on foot.
The stop happened the morning of October 10 on Clay Road in northwest Houston. Morales, 33, was driving an unmarked 2025 Jeep Grand Cherokee when Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, and another man jumped out of their truck and ran. Prosecutors say Morales drove over a median, chased Parra Hernandez through a parking lot and ran over both of his legs, breaking one leg in three places. Two men Morales had already detained were sitting handcuffed in the back of the Jeep at the time.
“The evidence we have in this case is as clear as any that I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated.”
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare
Teare announced the indictment Friday and released Morales’s body camera footage and surveillance video from a nearby business, which he says contradicts the ICE account. ICE says Parra Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle. Teare also said Morales drove the Jeep away before it could be impounded, erasing crash data stored in the vehicle, and that investigators still have not been given access to it. The man ICE says it was actually targeting that morning, Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, has reportedly been dead since 2017, according to his daughter.
“Allegations that ICE struck Miguel Parra-Hernandez intentionally are reckless and false.”
ICE, in a statement on the case
Parra Hernandez, a construction worker who has lived in the United States for about 30 years, is still hospitalized in ICE custody at a rehab facility. Morales was not in custody Friday. He faces 2 to 20 years in prison if convicted, and an indictment is an accusation, not a conviction. His attorney, David Lindenmuth, called the collision a tragic accident and the indictment political.
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