An illegal migrant who was released into the country during the Biden administration is accused of killing an Indianapolis mother in a drunken hit-and-run over the weekend, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Tamara Thomas, 33, was standing in the parking lot of an Indianapolis gas station on Saturday, waiting for her two brothers to pick her up, when she was struck and killed. DHS identified the driver as Edwin Alexander Sosa-Gonzalez, 22, a Honduran national.
According to police documents reviewed by the Indianapolis Star, Sosa-Gonzalez was speeding in a gray Honda CRV when he first struck another car, sending his vehicle swerving over curbs. Thomas tried to get out of the way but was hit by the Honda and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sosa-Gonzalez fled and was arrested hours later. Police said he smelled of alcohol, was stumbling and slurring his words. His blood alcohol concentration was later measured at 0.229 — nearly three times Indiana’s legal limit.
He has been charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident causing death or catastrophic injury, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, DHS said.
A Record DHS Says Should Never Have Happened
DHS said Sosa-Gonzalez entered the United States illegally through Texas in July 2021 and was arrested by Border Patrol at the time — but was released under the Biden administration’s policies. He surfaced again in February 2024, when he was arrested for driving while intoxicated and driving without ever having obtained a license, at which point he was placed into ICE custody.
ICE filed a detainer the day after Saturday’s crash. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin put the blame squarely on the previous administration’s border policies.
“This illegal alien, who had been released into our country by the Biden Administration, took the life of 33-year-old Tamara Renee Thomas because he was drunk behind the wheel,” Mullin said. “He has now been charged with hit-and-run and driving under the influence. ICE has lodged a detainer asking officials in Indiana to cooperate with us and make sure this killer never gets back onto the streets again.”
“This disaster was completely avoidable, and were it not for the reckless open-border policies of the Biden Administration, this woman would still be alive. My thoughts and prayers are with Tamara’s family and friends.”
A Father’s Grief
Tamara Thomas’s father, Tommy Thomas, has vowed to give his daughter a proper burial. He was candid with local reporters about his own past, including time he served in prison for dealing LSD.
“It should’ve never happened,” he told Fox59. “My daughter’s had a crap life. I might have had some part in that at one point in time. I wanna give her the best burial, I wanna give her the most proper burial that I can.”
He said he hopes to scatter her ashes in Hawaii if she is cremated. Tommy Thomas said his daughter, who dropped out of school before seventh grade, had struggled with drugs for years but had recently started getting clean.
“It wasn’t even the drugs or the normal sideshow of people that she hangs out with on a daily basis,” he said.
He told WTHR that he had long feared a phone call telling him his daughter had died of an overdose — and said, painfully, he almost wishes that had been the case.
“There was a long time that I really thought I was going to get a call that she was gone, and it was going to be because of a drug overdose,” he said. “And I hate to say it, but I wish it had been an overdose. I hate to know how much pain, if any, that she went through, you know, pinned underneath that car, and when that guy hit her.”
Tamara Thomas was a mother to a son.
