A Tulsa man who pulled over to help what he thought was a stranded SUV ended up robbed, assaulted, and thrown onto the roadway as the vehicle sped off, according to a criminal complaint. Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the 6100 block of North Rockford Avenue on August 31 after a witness reported seeing a man thrown from a moving SUV. Two men, 37-year-old Juan Torres and 35-year-old Jose Esparza-Becerra, are now behind bars facing felony charges and are both being held on an ICE detainer.
According to the victim’s account, he saw the SUV pulled over and stopped to check whether the occupants needed help, believing they were simply out of gas. Instead, officials say the men inside told him to get into their vehicle and demanded money from him. As reported by KOKH, the suspects then assaulted and threatened him before throwing him onto the roadway as the SUV drove away, leaving him with a fractured foot.
Flock Cameras Helped Track Down the Vehicle
Investigators say the Tulsa Police Department used its Flock Safety license plate reader cameras to locate the suspects’ vehicle, a detail confirmed in the same report. The department operates a network of more than 100 of the automated cameras feeding into its Real Time Information Center, at a cost of over $696,000 a year, according to the Tulsa Equity Alliance. License plate data collected through the system is generally stored for 30 days before being deleted, unless it’s preserved for an active criminal investigation, per the same organization’s research.
Once located, Torres was arrested on complaints of armed robbery and assault and battery with a deadly weapon, officials say. Esparza-Becerra faces the identical pair of complaints. Both charges are classified as violent felonies under Oklahoma law and carry the possibility of a life sentence — armed robbery with a dangerous weapon under Title 21 Section 801 carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years, while assault and battery with a deadly weapon under Title 21 Section 652 can also draw up to life in state custody.
What the ICE Detainers Mean for the Case
Both men are being held on an ICE detainer, an administrative federal request that allows local authorities to hold someone for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release so immigration officers can take custody, as Hoodline has previously reported. The detainers were processed through the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office’s 287(g) Jail Enforcement Model agreement with ICE, a program established in 2009 that allows trained detention officers at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center to review immigration status during booking, according to the Prison Policy Initiative…