'Affluenza' Fugitive Ethan Couch Gets 3-Day Stay From Mexican Court
Mexican authorities are holding off on deporting the Texas teen fugitive, who made headlines because of his "affluenza" defense back to the U.S., after a local court gave 18-year-old Ethan Couch a three-day court injunction.
Both Couch and his mother, Tonya Couch, had been scheduled to be extradited to the United States, and it was not immediately clear whether the court order extended to the teen's parent, The Associated Press reported based on reports from an unnamed official from the Mexican Migration Institute. The fugitive's attorneys did not immediately return calls for comment.
Mexican official Vera Lira had originally told Univision that both Ethan and Tonya Couch would be expelled from the country on Dec. 30.
"We are housing them in our provincial estancia, and [on Dec. 30] they will leave on a flight with destination Houston," Lira said. "[Ethan and Tonya Couch] were not able to show a regular status in the national territory, and they entered Mexico in an irregular way. They did not register their entry, and they declared that they were hiding because they have a case pending with the court of the state of Texas."
The two had been captured by Mexican police after they had spent three days in a rented condo at a resort development in Puerto Vallarta and then moved to another apartment in a poorer area. A U.S. Marshals Service agent apparently tipped local authorities off to the location of the teen and his mother.
Couch had been on juvenile probation after being convicted of killing four people in a 2013 drunk-driving wreck. His lawyers had infamously tried to blame the incident on "affluenza," a condition brought on by the teen's privileged upbringing. The teen disappeared when U.S. authorities investigated if he had violated the terms of his probation.
"They had planned to disappear," Tarrant County, Texas Sheriff Dee Anderson said. "They even had something that was almost akin to a going-away party before leaving town."