NEW ORLEANS — A company owned by a parish constable and an Arkansas state representative hired a bus full of illegal workers that caused a fatal accident on Interstate 10, and one of the workers with a particularly bad driving record was at the wheel.
WRS, an Arkansas company registered to three men — including Eddie Schmidt, the elected Ward 4 constable for St. Tammany Parish; and David Wallace, a state legislator from Leachville, Ark. — had a man round up potential workers. Wallace told The New Orleans Advocate that WRS hired a bus to take the work crew to a commercial job site in the Baton Rouge, La., area.
The driver of the bus, Denis Yasmir Amaya Rodriguez, 37, of Honduras, had been doing work for the man and construction jobs in the past year for Schmidt’s company. It’s unclear why Amaya ended up driving the bus rather than the bus company, Kristina’s Transportation, providing a driver.
Amaya had been stopped for various moving violations at least five times in the past four years, always without a driver’s license, The Advocate reported. The state police cited him Aug. 5 for driving without a license on I-10 in Metairie, La.
He had been in at least one accident and has been fined hundreds of dollars in Jefferson Parish, where Metairie is located, paying in full each time.
Now he’s charged with two counts of negligent homicide, negligent injuring, reckless operation and driving without a license after Sunday’s crash killed Chief Spencer Chauvin of the St. John Fire District and Jermaine Starr, 21, of Moss Point, Miss., and injured 41 others.
Louisiana has enhanced penalties for multiple offenses of driving without a licensed, but they are just fines, lawyer Donald "Chick" Foret said. Undocumented workers can't get driver's licenses and often choose to drive without them without facing any consequences related to their immigration status.
"This whole issue is complicated by the illegal immigration status of these drivers," Foret said. "It is my opinion that as a result of this accident, the Legislature will take a close look at the possible penalties and perhaps will institute penalties other than those that are purely financial."
Wallace told The Advocate he didn’t know that Amaya and the 24 others on the bus, which WRS was planning to hire, were illegal immigrants. He said his company would not have hired them if they were not able to provide proper documentation of their legal status
WRS hired party-bus company Kristina’s Transportation, based in Kenner, La., to provide the vehicle. But a search of for-hire and transportation licenses in Jefferson Parish and New Orleans did not turn up any licenses for Kristina’s or its trade name, AM Party Bus.
Christian Lombardo, the registered owner of Kristina’s Transportation, did not return messages seeking comment Monday and no one was in during a trip to the company's offices. State police investigators are investigating both the bus company and the role of WRS, spokeswoman Melissa Matey said
Messages for Schmidt — on vacation in the Dominican Republic since Saturday, according to his ex-wife — were not returned. A parish litter-patrol vehicle was parked Monday in his driveway in a gated subdivision in Mandeville, La.
Schmidt provided labor for many contractors in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina. He was described as a “growth expert and serial entrepreneur” in a press release earlier this year from Labor SMART, an Atlanta company that provides “on-demand temporary labor.”
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