A Pickup Truck Jumped a Nashville Sidewalk and Hit Four Pedestrians. The Driver Fled. Twenty-Two Years After He Promised ICE He’d Leave.
- 4 pedestrians struck when a pickup truck cut a left turn short and drove onto a Demonbreun Street sidewalk before dawn on June 13, 2026 — two of them already using wheelchairs — WSMV News 4, June 15, 2026
- 21 warrants issued for Felipe Alvarado Hernandez, 47, after Metro Nashville Police traced the truck through a private license-plate-reader camera — WKRN News 2; Nashville.gov
- Six Weeks the driver evaded arrest before investigators identified him at his Antioch home and he admitted he'd been driving — WSMV News 4, July 29, 2026
- 2004 the year DHS says Hernandez first agreed to leave the United States, after a Michigan police department referred him to ICE — 22 years before this crash — Fox News Digital, Aug. 10, 2026, citing DHS
- 632 people Davidson County's jail transferred into ICE custody over the past year, even as Nashville's sheriff claims exemption from Tennessee's new mandate to formally partner with the agency — Tennessee Lookout, May 13, 2026
It was shortly before 2 a.m. on Saturday, June 13, when a white GMC Sierra pickup truck cut a left turn short at Demonbreun Street and Music Circle East, drove up onto the sidewalk, and hit four pedestrians who were walking off the roadway. Two of the four were already using wheelchairs. One was dragged several feet before the truck kept moving, merged onto Interstate 40 East, and disappeared.
It took Metro Nashville Police six weeks — and a private license-plate-reader camera at a nearby parking garage — to identify the driver. On July 28, they arrested Felipe Alvarado Hernandez, 47, at his home in Antioch and booked him on 21 warrants. He is presumed innocent of every count unless and until a Tennessee court says otherwise.
What the police report did not contain, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement supplied days later. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Hernandez is an illegal immigrant — and this is not the first time the federal government has had his name on file. He agreed to leave the country once already, in 2004.
DHS says Hernandez entered the United States at an unknown date and location. What the department does have on record is a single, specific encounter: on January 5, 2004, he agreed to voluntary departure — the formal arrangement where a noncitizen agrees to leave the country on his own rather than go through a contested removal proceeding — after the Roseville Police Department in Michigan referred him to ICE following a retail-fraud arrest. That charge was later dropped. What isn’t on the public record is what happened next: whether Hernandez actually left in 2004 and returned, or never left at all. Either way, the file DHS pulled this month is the same one federal agents opened twenty-two years ago.
“When illegal aliens break our laws and endanger our communities, ICE will work with our law enforcement partners to ensure they face the consequences of their actions.”
Scott Ladwig, Acting Field Office Director, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations — New Orleans, statement to Fox News Digital, Aug. 10, 2026
ICE's New Orleans field office — which also covers Tennessee — has now lodged a detainer asking the Davidson County jail to notify the agency before Hernandez is released from state custody, so ICE can take him into federal custody for removal proceedings once his criminal case is resolved.
Demonbreun Street near Music Circle East sits in the heart of Nashville’s Gulch and Music Row nightlife corridor, and just before 2 a.m. that Saturday it was carrying its usual late-night foot traffic. Police say Hernandez’s pickup was headed toward the on-ramp for I-40 East when he cut the turn short, drove up onto the sidewalk, and struck the four pedestrians directly.
Two of the victims suffered minor injuries and refused treatment at the scene. A third had minor injuries and was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The fourth was dragged several feet by the truck, suffered serious injuries, and was still hospitalized in Vanderbilt’s Burn Unit as of July 29 — more than six weeks after the crash. Hernandez did not stop, did not call for help, and did not report the crash, according to police.
The break in the case came from a source police didn’t control: a privately owned license-plate-reader camera at a parking garage near the crash site. MNPD Hit and Run Investigator Keith Covert followed surveillance footage of the truck to that garage, subpoenaed the LPR system’s data, and traced the vehicle to Hernandez. When investigators interviewed him, he admitted he had been driving the truck that morning. He now faces second-offense driving on a revoked license and four counts each of reckless endangerment, leaving the scene of an accident with injury, failure to render aid, failure to provide financial responsibility, and failure to report an accident with injury — 21 warrants in total.
Whether that detainer gets honored runs through Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall (D), whose office runs the jail where Hernandez is held. Tennessee Senate Bill 2223, signed by Gov. Bill Lee (R) this spring, requires every county sheriff certified by the state’s POST Commission to enter a formal 287(g) partnership with ICE by January 1, 2027, or risk losing state funding. Hall says his office is exempt — Nashville-Davidson County is the only sheriff’s office among Tennessee’s 95 not required to hold that certification, a reading Metro’s own legal department has backed. Hall has called the mandate “all politics.”
The exemption claim does not mean the jail refuses ICE. By Hall’s own office’s account, 632 people arrested on local charges were transferred out of Nashville’s jails into ICE custody over the twelve months before that reporting — cooperation that happens case by case, without the standing 287(g) agreement the new state law would require.
The friction in Nashville’s relationship with ICE has run through the mayor’s office, not the jail. Mayor Freddie O’Connell (D) issued Executive Order 30, requiring Metro departments to report any contact with federal immigration officials within one business day. His office then published a report that included the names of ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents on a city website — names it later called a mistaken inclusion and removed. That triggered a formal request from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) for a DOJ investigation and a joint probe by two U.S. House committees, driven by Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), into whether O’Connell obstructed federal immigration enforcement.
Nashville's woketivist mayor is DOXXING federal law enforcement. By publicly posting the names of DHS and ICE agents, he's handing intel to gangs like MS-13, who can now track down and potentially target these officers. Democrats need to stop helping the cartels—and start…
Nashville and Davidson County share a consolidated Metro government, and every official whose name attaches to this story’s policy fights is elected. Mayor O’Connell (D) has repeatedly rejected the “sanctuary city” label federal officials have applied to Nashville, saying “we do not impede federal enforcement actions” — a claim state law backs up on paper: Tennessee bans local sanctuary policies outright, making it a felony for an official to vote for one. Sheriff Hall (D) runs the jail that still transfers hundreds of people to ICE a year despite claiming exemption from the state’s new 287(g) mandate. And at the state level, it was Republican Gov. Bill Lee who signed that mandate into law, over a Democratic mayor’s objections in the state’s largest city.
None of that political fight touched the Hernandez case directly. No obstruction complaint has been raised about this arrest: Metro police used private camera data to build it, booked him on state charges, and ICE lodged its detainer through the ordinary channel once those charges were filed. The friction sits elsewhere in Nashville’s ICE relationship — in the mayor’s reporting order, in the sheriff’s exemption claim, in a congressional probe still open more than a year after it began. This case is a reminder of why that fight keeps recurring: a man DHS flagged in 2004 was still driving Nashville streets in 2026, and a truck he was behind the wheel of, prosecutors allege, left four people injured before ICE ever entered the picture.
Ulises Raigoza-Martinez, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, pled guilty to murder, theft, and tampering with evidence after he RAN OVER and KILLED restaurant owner Matt Carney in Nashville, Tennessee. He should NEVER have been in our country to commit this heinous murder. We will work with our state and local partners to ensure that he is handed over to ICE custody once his sentence is complete, so that we can REMOVE him from our nation.
The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven't been seen in decades. The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted. Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out.
A general statement on ICE operations, posted amid a separate controversy over traffic stops — not written about this case
A pickup truck jumped a Nashville sidewalk before dawn on June 13, striking four pedestrians — two already in wheelchairs — and fled onto I-40. It took Metro Police six weeks and a private license-plate-reader camera to identify Felipe Alvarado Hernandez, 47, who is presumed innocent of the 21 warrants against him. DHS says he is an illegal immigrant who already agreed to leave the country once, in 2004, after a Michigan police referral. ICE has now lodged a detainer with Sheriff Daron Hall’s (D) jail — the same jail that transferred 632 people to ICE last year despite claiming exemption from Tennessee’s new mandate that every sheriff formally partner with the agency, a law Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed over objections rooted in Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s (D) Nashville.
