SAN ANGELO, Texas—Gin Jespersen and her family are angry.
They are angry at the man accused of killing her 71-year-old mother, Maria “Coke” Tambunga, her 7-year-old niece, Emilia “Emi” Tambunga, and two illegal immigrants at the end of a high-speed chase.
They are angry at the social media platforms reportedly used by Mexican cartels to recruit the driver. They are angry that the accused smuggler allegedly broadcast the crime over social media in a perverse act of self-aggrandizement.
They are angry that criminal cartels make billions of dollars by victimizing millions of people.
But Ms. Jespersen’s most profound anger is reserved for those she says set the stage for the crime that killed her mother and niece.
“At the end of the day, there’s only one person in jail. If I could swing my wand, I would put every one of those jerks in jail, starting with [President Joe] Biden, starting with [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas, starting with [Texas Gov.] Greg Abbott, starting with the Texas DPS. I would send every one of them to some kind of detention and say, ‘You get to be in here until I say, and I feel better, and you’ve had time to think about your lack of decisions or your political games,’” Ms. Jespersen told The Epoch Times.
“The bottom line for me is just this deep anger against the system.”
The Act covers many law enforcement issues, but the centerpiece is a system similar to the Amber Alert network that notifies communities of missing or endangered children. This system would notify communities and law enforcement when a high-speed chase is occurring in their area so they can avoid them.
Ms. Jespersen said it’s about honoring the memory of her niece and mother.
“We obviously know there is no way we can bring them back. But we just want to make sure we honor them in every single way possible,” Ms. Jespersen said.
Interstate Highway 10 from El Paso to San Antonio crosses some of Earth’s most rugged and treacherously beautiful terrain. It isn’t desert, but it isn’t forest either. It’s Southwest Texas, home to thorny mesquite trees, horse crippler cactus, Texas horned lizards, rocks, hot, dry soil, and all manner of snakes.
It is also the territory where smugglers move their human and material contraband. More than a few illegal immigrants making the dangerous journey north from the border have been happy to see I-10. For many, it is a high-speed yellow brick road out of the scrub east to Florida or west to California.
It is on I-10 that many of them meet the drivers hired by the cartels to take them further into the United States. For years, many of them have passed through Ozona in Crockett County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census, 3,098 people live in Crockett County, with 2,663 in Ozona.
“We are related to probably more than half that,” Ms. Tambunga told The Epoch Times. “All of our family lives there.”
Ms. Jespersen’s husband, Tim, has researched the genealogy and found that eight generations of Tambungas have called Ozona home.
“They were in Texas before Texas was Texas,” he told The Epoch Times.
Ozona is where Emilio Tambunga met a pretty, strong-willed young woman named Maria Socorro Alvarez during a Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. He was home on leave from the U.S. Marine Corps. At one point, the congregants stood to greet one another, and he realized she was sitting behind him.
“I turned around and said, ‘Whoa, what’s this?’” Mr. Tambunga told The Epoch Times.
Within two years, the couple were married and living in Ozona. Mr. Tambunga eventually went to work as a deputy with the Crockett County Sheriff’s Office. His new wife, known as Coco, a play on her middle name of Socorro, went to work in a local restaurant.
It was there that she developed a love for cooking and Coca-Cola. And it was there that she got the name everyone came to know her by, Coke.
Mr. Tambunga said his wife loved to cook and she loved her family, and made no bones about what was important to her. Coke was invested in the lives of her friends and neighbors, Mr. Tambunga said. After all, they were probably related somewhere along the line.
She cooked for community events, family gatherings, and, of course, her own family.
“She was everybody’s mom,” Ms. Jespersen said.
But more than that, Ms. Jespersen said, she was her daughters’ mother pouring her life into them. She taught them to appreciate their family and to enjoy life. Ms. Jespersen remembers watching Coke dance, and she remembers feeling special.
She also remembers feeling a little supplanted when her younger sister, Ms. Tambunga, was born. They were both displaced seven years ago when Ms. Tambunga gave birth to a baby girl named Emilia Brooke Tambunga.
Ms. Jespersen said it was clear this little girl had stolen her grandmother’s heart. Coke set to work teaching, loving, and shaping the little girl just as she had her daughters over the years.
“We’re good women because she poured into us,” Ms. Jespersen said.
Ms. Tambunga said that as Emilia grew, she displayed more and more of her grandmother’s characteristics. Ms. Tambunga described “Emi” as a girly girl who loved having her hair and nails done. She said the little girl was a natural model, lighting up when a camera was present, and she loved her grandparents, who doted on her.
But Emi was no hothouse flower. She took third place in her division as the only girl competing at her first Tae Kwon Do tournament. Her athletic pursuits went beyond martial arts. Mr. Tambunga laughed as he remembered Emi complaining that a softball is not soft.
The only thing that seemed to frighten her was water. Mr. Tambiunga said the little girl didn’t want to learn to swim. He said that sometimes he would tease her.
“I would say, ‘I’m gonna grab you and throw you in the water,’” Mr. Tambunga said. But she knew better. “She would say, ‘You’re my partner, and partners don’t do that.’”
March 13 was supposed to be a special day for Emi. Spring Break ended, and she and her mother would be leaving Ozona for San Angelo, more than an hour’s drive away. The Jespersens were living there, and Ms. Tambunga needed to relocate so she could continue pursuing a business degree at Angelo State University.
The 7-year-old was a little nervous about the move to a new school and away from her hometown. So Ms. Tambunga and Emi spent a girls’ weekend in San Angelo. They got manicures and pedicures. “I let her have ice cream twice on the same day,” Ms. Tambunga said.
Visiting With Grandparents
Mr. Tambunga said the day was an average visit with a little girl and her grandparents. They played, spent time together, and enjoyed each other’s company.Later in the day, Coke arranged for Emi to meet with some cousins for a play date. She asked Mr. Tambunga if he wanted to come along. He decided not to.
They were unaware that a pickup loaded with 11 illegal immigrants was headed east on I-10 toward Ozona when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper attempted to pull the truck over. The driver decided to run.
“He was driving over 105 miles an hour. He was recording himself. He was live on Facebook. And he turns the camera and showed the speedometer, and it was over 105. So that’s how we know for sure,” Ms. Tambunga said.
Truck Had No Lights
The report states that the truckload of illegal immigrants was running without lights.As it sped east along 15th Street, the traffic light changed from green to red at the intersection of state Highway 163, which passed under I-10 and crossed 15th Street. When the light for SH 163 turned green, Coke entered the intersection heading home with Emi. She likely didn’t see the smuggler’s truck until it was too late, if she saw it at all.
As a retired law enforcement officer, Mr. Tambunga knows the infinite number of factors that may contribute to such tragedies. And he knows the futility of hindsight. But he is also a husband and a grandfather, and his life has been irrevocably altered.
“I blame myself for not being there because they invited me to go with them. Maybe if I had been with them, I'd have been driving, and we would have seen that truck coming sooner,” Mr. Tambunga said.
In their grief and anger, the family decided to force something positive from the tragedy. So they approached their congressman, Mr. Gonzales, with the idea of a warning system. Ms. Tambunga said it would be modeled on the Amber Alert system, which notifies the public of missing or endangered children.
Emi-Coke Accountability Act
On June 12, Mr. Gonzales introduced HR 4025, the Emi-Coke Accountability Act of 2023. In addition to the warning system, which would be implemented and run by the U.S. Department of Justice, the bill calls for significant changes in law enforcement practices along the border.These include increased funding, unform chase policies for departments along the I-10 corridor, more substantial penalties for U.S. citizens involved in smuggling, serious enforcement action against Mexican cartels, and securing the border by enforcing existing laws while devising a more efficient legal path to citizenship.
It also calls for some way to hold politicians and officials accountable for policies that can be tied to the deaths of Americans.
The family was invited to testify before Congress, and they went ready to make their voices heard. They got a lesson in modern civics.
They were told they could each submit written testimony for a July 26 joint hearing by the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence.
They were required to edit their statements several times because Democrats would block them from the Congressional Record if they were too critical of President Joe Biden’s border policies. Ms. Tambunga said she bristled as she heard other witnesses and politicians claim the border is secure.
When it was her turn to speak, she told them she wasn’t there to address the border specifically except to tell them “How big a monster the border crisis has become.”
Tim Jespersen thought they might have made some headway during a private meeting with Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. He said Mr. Mayorkas expressed sympathy for the family’s loss and asked them what he could do.
“And he’s like, ‘What do you want?’ We want 3,500 troops on the border. Secure the border ... we’re very, very, very, very direct,” Mr. Jespersen said of the conversation.
Soon after, the administration announced it would send 3,000 troops to the border in anticipation of the expiration of Title 42, a policy implemented by former President Donald Trump to help control the flow of illegal immigrants. Mr. Jespersen said that, at first, he was encouraged. But that didn’t last.
“They didn’t use them to secure the border. They used them to help facilitate the processing for the Border Patrol, which made it even worse. So that wasn’t just a kick in the you know what, but that was a stick it in and twist the knife.” Mr. Jespersen said.
Mr. Tambunga said nothing will change until the nation’s leaders are held accountable.
“The people that can do something about it, they just talk the talk. Like my daughter said at the hearing, we need to stop the bickering, stop dividing,” he said.
“They need to put the country first.”
