A 21-year-old Indian-origin truck driver has been charged with causing a fatal semi-truck crash in California earlier this week while allegedly driving under the influence, according to media reports. The driver, identified as Jashanpreet Singh, is accused of ploughing his truck into slow-moving traffic in Southern California on Tuesday, Fox News reported on Wednesday.

The collision killed at least three people and left several others injured. Citing police sources, the report said Singh did not apply the brakes before the crash, and toxicology results confirmed that he was impaired at the time of the incident.

He has been taken into custody on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. According to reports, Singh is an illegal immigrant who entered the US through its southern border in 2022 and was released pending an immigration hearing. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sources confirmed that he was not in lawful immigration status, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued an immigration detainer after his arrest.

Reports added that Singh had been released under the Biden administration’s 2022 “alternatives to detention” policy. This marks the second incident since August involving an Indian-origin truck driver allegedly responsible for a fatal crash in the US.

On August 12, 28-year-old Harjinder Singh reportedly made an illegal U-turn in his tractor-trailer in Florida, leading to a collision that killed three people. He has been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide.

Following the Florida crash, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a temporary halt on the issuance of commercial truck driver work visas, saying, “The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on US roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.”
(With PTI Inputs)