Illegal Indian immigrant truck driver, high on drugs, kills three in US crash
A 21-year-old Indian man living illegally in the United States has been accused of causing a deadly truck crash that killed three people in Southern California. The man, identified as Jashanpreet Singh, has been charged with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated after crashing his semi-truck into slow-moving traffic on a San Bernardino County freeway, according to US media reports.
Authorities said Singh entered the US unlawfully in 2022, crossing the southern border and first being detained by Border Patrol agents in California’s El Centro Sector that March. He was later released under the Biden administration’s “alternatives to detention” policy, which allows certain undocumented migrants to remain in the country while awaiting immigration hearings. Dashcam footage from Singh’s Freightliner truck reportedly showed the moment it slammed into an SUV, triggering a fiery crash that killed at least three people and injured several others. The victims have not yet been identified. Singh himself was injured in the collision, along with a mechanic who had been helping change a tyre on another vehicle. Investigators said Singh never applied the brakes before the crash and was under the influence of drugs at the time. “His toxicology results confirmed impairment,” said CHP Officer Rodrigo Jimenez, as quoted by ABC7 News. Singh was taken to a hospital for medical evaluation before being arrested.
The US Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Singh has no legal immigration status in the country. Following his arrest, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued an immigration detainer against him, Fox News reported. This incident adds to a growing list of crashes involving undocumented immigrant truck drivers in the US. In a similar case in August, another Indian national, Harjinder Singh, who had crossed the southern border illegally in 2018 and later obtained a commercial driver’s licence in California, was charged with causing a crash in Fort Pierce, Florida, that also claimed three lives.
