After her 18-year-old daughter, Hailey King, was run over by an illegal immigrant driving a truck 36 mph above the speed limit, Angel Mom Kathy Hall promised her dying daughter she was “never going to stop fighting for justice for her.”
In an interview obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital from advocacy group The American Border Story, Hall recounted her daughter’s grisly killing, which, she said, launched her crusade to make sure that no other parents and children undergo the same fate.
While riding a scooter with a friend in Fayetteville, Arkansas, King was hit from behind by a speeding truck driven by illegal alien Sergio Rodriguez. According to Hall, her daughter was on her way home for dinner. Upon impact, King was thrown onto the hood of the truck. Hall said Rodriguez continued driving, swerving into another lane and sending King headfirst onto the street. King suffered a brain stem hemorrhage, inner and outer cranial hemorrhages, a burst spleen and a lacerated liver. She died shortly after the Nov. 7, 2016, incident, leaving behind her 2-year-old daughter, Brooklyn.
Hall said Rodriguez was sentenced to 17 years in prison for manslaughter, battery and leaving the scene of a crime. After just one and a half years, Hall said she was notified that Rodriguez had become eligible for parole, forcing her to repeatedly relive her trauma each time she goes to court to testify against his release.
Hall said that authorities showed up at her door the night of the incident and told her, “You need to come with us to the hospital.”
She said they took her to her daughter’s hospital room where she found her “sitting up at a kind of an angle and her eyes were wide open. But she was like staring off into space.”
“I knew right when I looked at her that she was gone,” said Hall. “So, I sat down with her and talked to her and told her how much I love her. Told her I was never going to stop fighting for justice for her… and then her heart stopped.”
Besides King, Hall said that her daughter’s friend, Osmin “David” Gutierrez, was “trapped underneath the truck for over a mile” as the illegal immigrant continued driving. She said that “when sparks started happening, [Rodriguez] pulled into an apartment complex. And when he did, David’s torso was – his legs detached, [and he] was left in the driveway screaming for his life.”
“He was still conscious,” she said.
Gutierrez died two years later from a blood clot resulting from his lost legs.
Despite her promise, Hall said getting justice for her daughter has been a “hard long road.” After the incident, Hall said Rodriguez “disappeared for three days” before police found him. When he was apprehended, Hall said Rodriguez was released on bond in less than an hour.
She believes that Rodriguez was “protected every step of the way” during the trial process while she and her family “were treated like we were the criminals when we’d go into court.”
Despite his immigration status, Hall said a decision was made not to notify US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She said she was told that “if we would have informed ICE that he was here and he was illegal, that they would have just picked him up and taken him down to Texas and sent him back and he would have never had to deal with the death of [her] daughter.”
At the time, Hall said the family felt this “was kind of putting us in a rock and a hard place.”
“It’s so confusing to be there and say, ‘OK, do I want him to be deported right now or do I just want him to spend time either way and get him out?’” she said. “We had no idea, you know, a choice like that. What kind of decision do you make?”
Due to parole hearings, Hall said that she and her family “have to relive this right now every two years.”
“As soon as the pain dulls a little bit, you have to go back through the whole thing preparing to try to keep him behind bars again,” she said. “My daughter, the only thing she did wrong that day was being on the back of a scooter coming home for dinner. She didn’t deserve this.”
“She doesn’t deserve for her daughter to not know who she is and how much she loved her. She doesn’t deserve any of it, and she deserves to have the justice I promised to her as she was dying,” Hall continued, concluding, “I’ll never stop fighting; I’m going to do everything I can to keep my promise to her.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Fayetteville Police Department, Washington County Sheriff’s Office, Washington County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and Washington County Circuit Court for comment.
