A Texas Army National Guard soldier who was extradited from the U.S. to England over a major road crash will face sentencing in November after pleading guilty in a British court this week.
Isac Alejandro Calderon, who Army records say holds the rank of specialist, was charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving. He entered a guilty plea Thursday in Kidderminster Magistrates Court, according to a West Mercia police statement to Stars and Stripes on Friday.
His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 7 in Worcester Crown Court, the statement said. A Sky News report from July gives his age as 23.
Efforts to reach the Texas National Guard to ask what unit and duty station Calderon was assigned to at the time were not immediately successful.
Calderon fled back to the United States about four months after the July 31, 2023, head-on collision, which happened near Shucknall, a rural area less than 30 miles from the Welsh border.
Elizabeth Donowho, a British nurse, suffered multiple fractures in the crash, which left her temporarily unable to walk.
Calderon was also injured in the crash and had to be treated in a hospital, the West Mercia police statement said. After that, he showed up for police interviews, so he was not arrested and was allowed to keep his passport, according to the statement.
Calderon told authorities that he didn’t plan to return to the U.S. until March 2024, but on Nov. 25, 2023, he left the country just before a scheduled court date, the BBC reported, citing court documents from the extradition hearing.
An arrest warrant was issued in December 2023. Calderon said he went back to Texas because he didn’t have enough money to remain in England, according to the court filings.
Witnesses saw him passing vehicles at high speeds on the A4103 before the crash, the BBC and Sky News reported, citing court documents. The Sky News report also said he told authorities that he had been vaping in the car and that his driving was “definitely not safe.”
Court documents added that Calderon said he was “not at all” familiar with British road markings and did not know that solid white lines designate a no-passing zone, Sky News said.
In August, U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Bray ordered Calderon’s extradition, concluding that there was “virtually no possibility that Calderon will appear in court in the U.K. of his own,” the BBC reported.
It’s unclear what Calderon was doing in England at the time. Police told Donowho that he’d been visiting the British special forces base in nearby Herefordshire, according to Sky News.
But that report also said Calderon told authorities he was traveling for “personal activities” when the crash happened.
The case has drawn parallels in England to the saga of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat who fled back to the U.S. after a 2019 crash outside RAF Croughton that killed a British teenager.