Katie Britt's Opportunistic Misuse Of Laken Riley's Murder

“It Could Have Been Your Daughter”

Dear Katie,

You have one helluva nerve exploiting the murder of Laken Riley. I found your comments deeply offensive, especially your comment that “it could have been your daughter.” It was once, in fact, my daughter. Maybe you heard about it? How, on the night of April 17, 2009, Leigh Anna Jimmerson, 16, and her boyfriend, Tad Mattle, 19, were slammed into at the intersection of Airport Road and Whitesburg Drive in Huntsville by an undocumented man. They died on impact. Tad’s car exploded, and Leigh Anna’s body was so badly burned that an officer at the scene strongly encouraged us not to look at it.

Of course, the context of their deaths was more complicated than you seem to want it to be. It is always more complicated. It is not as simple as Felix Ortega’s lack of legal status.

On the night of the accident, Ortega was being chased, without any necessity whatsoever, by a police officer. The reality is that any contact with the police is dangerous for people like Felix. I’ve had contact with the police several times. Only once did I feel any danger, but that is a story for another time. Normally, because I’ve been stopped for not having my headlights on or hanging too long in the passing lane or parking in a restricted spot, contact with the police is little more than an annoyance and sometimes a fine.

But for people like Felix, contact with the police can lead to the loss of one’s life, either metaphorically because of the threat of deportation or literally because of the dangerous system that is Alabama’s penal system. Perhaps you’ve heard of the torture and murder by police of Tony Mitchell in Walker County jail? Or, because contact with the police by people like Felix could literally mean death because to return to his home in Alabama were he to be deported would necessarily mean a dangerous life-threatening journey around the wall far out into the Pacific Ocean, through the unforgiving Sonora Desert, or through the treacherous Rio Grande which, at minimum, has already cost 9,000 people their lives. That is a conservative figure. The actual death toll likely is somewhere around 27,000.

Felix Ortega was headed south on Memorial Parkway towards an area not heavily trafficked at 9:00 on a Friday night. Trying to elude the officer who was chasing him, he made the fateful decision to turn to the east onto Airport Road, one of the most heavily trafficked thoroughfares in Huntsville, especially on a Friday night at 9:00. Necessarily, he was headed to the congested and always dangerous intersection with Whitesburg Drive.

Tad Mattle and Leigh Anna Jimmerson

Ortega was arrested at the scene. The officer told a reporter he was puzzled that the faster he drove in pursuit of Ortega, the faster Ortega drove. Ortega was charged with and convicted of two counts of reckless murder. After the bench trial, Ortega apologized to us and the Mattles and expressed that he would trade places with Tad and Leigh Anna if he could. By contrast, we never heard from the police. We did not hear from them that night. We did not hear from them at any time thereafter. They sure never offered us an acknowledgment of their role in Tad’s and Leigh Anna’s deaths nor an apology.

What became of Felix Ortega? Two weeks before he was to be released early with an ankle monitor, he was murdered in Elmore County Correctional Center. He was 39 years old.

The night of April 17, 2009 was the point at which our daughter’s death and our grief began to be exploited. The Huntsville Times ran with the fact that I was a well-known advocate for undocumented people: “Stunning Twist!” ran one headline. Willing to do anything to sell a few more papers, it created a feud between the Mattles and me out of whole cloth. It was a feud that didn’t exist but that did take quite a while to straighten out. Members of the City Council raged. Others wanted to drag Ortega out of jail and lynch him.

On Fox News, Sean Hannity wondered whether there were anyone who could be sympathetic towards undocumented people after what happened to this cute couple. Years later, Katie, your fellow Alabamian in the US Congress, Mo Brooks, did what you are doing. Keep in mind, he never expressed any condolences towards us at the time of their deaths even though we were in his Congressional district. Yet, he had the cynical political astuteness to realize their deaths could be exploited to his advantage. He stood up in the US House of Representatives, held up a picture of Tad, mentioned him by name, and railed against undocumented people who, he alleged, went around killing people.

Then, there were those who shared their opinion of me. A local shock jock told his listeners that if people knew who I was, they would be more pissed off than sympathetic to me. He followed me around for a while decrying the “hate” I was fomenting. Then there was the one who said he had not believed in God until God took my daughter’s life. Or the one who said that Ellin Jimmerson “pimps out her dead daughter for her own political gain.”

Katie, let me make sure you understand me. You have no right to exploit Laken Riley’s death. You have no right to exploit the grief of her parents, family, and friends. You have no right to exploit the tenuous position in which undocumented people find themselves.

You said, “It could have been your daughter.” It was my daughter. I am profoundly offended that you have chosen, without realizing it, to enter that sorry cadre of worthless politicians who would exploit both my daughter’s death and the unfortunate legal plight of Felix Ortega if it held political promise.

Sincerely,
Ellin Jimmerson