UPDATE: An ADC spokesman tells New Times that Castro's a corrections officer.
An Arizona Department of Corrections worker is accused of ramming into an SUV with six passengers -- five of them kids -- on Interstate 10 last week, causing some of the children to be ejected from the vehicle.
The reason 35-year-old Ricardo Castro allegedly ran into this SUV on November 20 was that he was mad at his wife -- who had absolutely nothing to do with the people in the SUV, authorities say.
According to court documents obtained by New Times, Castro -- a 12-year veteran of the Department of Corrections -- was upset that his wife had received a text message from her ex-boyfriend.
After this, Castro pulled over on an off-ramp, and told his back-seat passengers -- his daughter and mother-in-law -- to get out of the car. Castro's wife later told investigators that Castro hit her several times in the face, and attempted to unbuckle her seat belt before he rear-ended the SUV at a high rate of speed, according to the court documents.
All six passengers in that SUV were hospitalized, including a 14-year-old boy whose back was fractured in the crash. A 13-year-old girl was the only one still in the hospital of yesterday, according to Arizona Department of Public Safety, as she sustained road rash after being ejected from the SUV.
DPS also notes that a fatal crash happened about 45 minutes later, which was indirectly related to Castro's alleged ramming of the SUV.
A semi carrying furniture crashed into another semi that was stopped in the back-up caused by the wreck Castro allegedly caused. Those semis ended up hitting four cars, plus another semi, but the driver of the truck carrying the furniture died after his truck caught on fire.
The interstate in the Buckeye area was closed for about 12 hours, until noon on November 21.
We're still waiting to hear back from the Arizona Department of Corrections about what Castro's job is there, so we'll update this post when we hear back from them. Court documents note that Castro's also an Army veteran.
Castro was arrested yesterday, and booked into jail on 12 felony charges, seven of them aggravated-assault charges.
Here's how court documents describe Castro's possible domestic-violence issues:
Castro's bond was set at $200,000.
