'Driver inattention' led to Marines' fatal crash, deputy reports

The vehicle transporting two Marines killed in an April 14 vehicle crash in Santa Teresa drove off the roadway to avoid a head-on collision, according to newly released police reports and 911 recordings.

Lance Cpls. Albert Aguilera, 22, and Marcelino Gamino, 28, both California residents deployed from Camp Pendleton with the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, were killed in the crash. They were riding at the end of a convoy of vehicles traveling west on N.M. 9, a two-lane highway close to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The crash occurred at approximately 8:50 a.m. Multiple witnesses who called emergency dispatch said they were at the end of a line of vehicles following a Border Patrol vehicle that moved into the eastbound lane to pass a commercial truck.

At the end of the line was a Jeep Gladiator driven by 19-year-old Zeth Collins, as identified in a Doña Ana County Sheriff’s report. The military has not identified Collins by name or rank, but the police report lists him as serving in the same battalion as Aguilera and Gamino.

Witnesses said Collins moved onto the southern shoulder of the highway to avoid a head-on collision with an eastbound vehicle, driving into a ravine and crashing into the ditch wall with enough force that the front end was smashed in and the truck bed bent upward, as a sheriff’s deputy noted in his report. The deputy attributed the crash to “driver inattention” and failing to clear the road before passing.

The three passengers were found unresponsive. Marines and Border Patrol agents rendered aid on scene until the patients were transported by Border Patrol helicopters to University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas. Witnesses who called 911 said the injuries appeared to include multiple fractures, spinal injuries and “serious” blood loss.

Collins was initially reported to be in critical condition and no update was available.

No details were available as to the vehicles’ destination, why they were following a Border Patrol vehicle or why its emergency lights were activated. The three Marines were on a border mission for the recently formed Joint Task Force — Southern Border as part of military mobilization at the border.

The mobilization comes at the behest of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in January and subsequent transfer of federal land near the border through California, Arizona and New Mexico for use in military installations.