MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The van driver who authorities said gave them a fake name following a fatal bus crash has been identified as a 24-year-old woman from Guatemala, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Monday.
Olga Marina Franco was the woman who allegedly ran a stop sign, hitting a school bus in a crash that killed four children near the town of Cottonwood, authorities said. Franco had told authorities she was 23-year-old Alianiss Nunez Morales and that she was from Mexico.
Lyon County Attorney Richard Maes on Friday charged the woman with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide, driving without a license and a stop sign violation.
ICE has filed paperwork to keep Franco in custody after the criminal case is resolved, saying it has developed probable cause that she is an illegal immigrant. Franco's fingerprints didn't show up in its database, indicating she had no prior contact with U.S. immigration authorities, the agency said in a written statement.
ICE officials said they planned to assist the Minnesota State Patrol and other law enforcement agencies in investigating the circumstances of the crash.
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Attorney Manuel Guerrero, who represented the woman on Friday in court, did not immediately return a call Monday. The woman had told authorities through an interpreter she stopped at the stop sign on County Road 24 and that when she took off, the bus hit her.
Also Monday, the two brothers killed in the crash were remembered at their joint funeral service. The funeral for Jesse Javens, 13, and Hunter Javens, 9, was held at Lakeview School in Cottonwood, where classes had been canceled.
Hunter Javens would have celebrated his 10th birthday Monday, and the roughly 1,400 mourners at the funeral sang the Happy Birthday song to his twin sister Sasha, according to a report in the Marshall Independent.
"Hunter would want to celebrate his twin sister's birthday. Jesse would want to celebrate his little sister's birthday," the Rev. Gloria Anderson said at the service, according to the newspaper report.
More than 1,000 people attended the funeral Sunday for Emilee Olson, 9. The funeral for Reed Stevens, 12, of Marshall, has been scheduled for Thursday at the school.
