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Community members gather at a crash scene where three men were killed and one fatally injured when a semitrailer struck a passenger van head-on Tuesday. The scene is on Indiana State Route 67 about 3 miles from Mercer County.
Kristyn Fisher/The Commercial Review
By JERRY MARTIN and WILLIAM KINCAID
newsroom@dailystandard.com
The driver of a semitrailer at the center of a head-on collision in Jay County that left four dead and two hospitalized was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thursday morning, leading to a tidal wave of media and social media coverage that rolled all the way to the White House by early Thursday afternoon.
Bekzhan Beishekeev was driving a 2022 Freightliner semitrailer eastbound on Indiana State Route 67 in Jay County just before 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon when he swerved into the westbound lane to avoid a slowing semitrailer in front of him. Beishekeev collided head-on with a 15-passenger Chevrolet van carrying members of the Bryant-area Amish community who were on their way home from work. The crash occurred at the intersection of County Road 550 East, about 3 miles west of the Ohio state line.
According to local media reports, three of the passengers in the van were pronounced dead at the scene, while the driver of the van and two passengers were transported to area hospitals with serious injuries. One of the passengers passed away later at the hospital.
The Jay County Coroner's Office identified the dead as Henry Eicher, 50, Menno Eicher, 25, Paul Eicher, 19, and Simon Girod, 23, all of Bryant, Indiana. Police identified the driver of the van as Donald Stipp, 55, of Portland. Stipp was in critical condition at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton after multiple surgeries, according to information posted online by a relative.
Bekzhan Beishekeev, 30, was booked into the Jay County Jail on Wednesday before being detained by ICE on Thursday. He was identified as a Kyrgyzstan national by DHS.
Beishekeev was arrested after the crash on a bench warrant and booked into the Jay County Jail Wednesday afternoon. But around 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon, ICE reported that "ICE's 287(g) partners at the Indiana State Police arrested Beishekeev, and he'll remain in ICE Fort Wayne's custody pending immigration proceedings."
"ICE issued an immigration detainer against Beishekeev with the Jay County Jail on Feb. 4," the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to Fox News. "And, because the state of Indiana cooperates with ICE, we were able to take him into custody on the morning of February 5."
Once word of the ICE detainer became public knowledge, reporting and commentary on the driver's status and the tragic outcome of the crash swept from regional media and social media to a Facebook account for ICE, then to national media like Fox News, and finally to the White House, where White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made Beishekeev a highlight of her Thursday afternoon press conference.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed "a wide-open border" for the Jay County tragedy.
"For those who don't know, and all of you should report on it, four Americans were tragically killed and lost their lives this week yet again, from an illegal alien, an individual, who was paroled into the country by the Biden administration using the CBP One app which they created like a magic pass to Disneyland," Leavitt told reporters in the White House briefing room.
Her remarks came in response to a question from a reporter about the Indiana tragedy, and she held up a document that included a photo of Beishekeev while she spoke.
"This is another tragedy that could have been prevented if not for the wide-open border," Leavitt added.
The Department of Homeland Security also told Fox News that Beishekeev is a Kyrgyzstani national who entered the U.S. via the Biden-era CBP One cell phone app on Dec. 19, 2024, at the Nogales, Ariz., port of entry, and he was released into the U.S. via parole.
"Not only was Bekzhan Beishekeev released into our country by the Biden administration using the CBP One app, but he was also given a commercial driver's license by Governor Shapiro's Pennsylvania. These decisions have had deadly consequences and led to the death of four innocent people in Indiana on Tuesday," added DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement. "It is incredibly dangerous for illegal aliens, who often don't know our traffic laws or even English, to be operating semi-trucks on America's roads. These sanctuary governors must stop giving illegal aliens commercial driver's licenses before another American gets killed."
ICE went further in joining the effort to paint Beishekeev as an example of the criminal element among undocumented immigrants in the country, referring to the truck driver in a Facebook post as a "criminal illegal alien" who has been "charged with killing 4 in Indiana."
"This tragedy and loss of American lives could have been prevented had PA not issued a CDL to an illegal alien," the post continued. The post was accompanied by a graphic that included the mug shot of Beishekeev from the Jay County Jail and his CDL license issued by Pennsylvania.
DHS and ICE called attention to Bekzhan Beishekeev's Pennsylvania CDL.
Beeshekiev's arrest has sparked interest in multiple controversies surrounding undocumented immigrants working in the U.S.
In November, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found Pennsylvania violated existing federal safety regulations by issuing non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses illegally - including to ineligible foreigners without verifying their legal status, according to an FMCSA news release.
DOT said it would withhold nearly $75 million in federal funding if the state did not immediately revoke the illegally issued licenses and correct dangerous failures USDOT identified in Pennsylvania's CDL program. The Pennsylvania Senate's Transportation Committee held hearings on the problems in December, but it is unclear whether the DOT charges have been resolved.
Following a similar audit from the Trump administration, California announced plans in mid-November to revoke 17,000 CDLs with expiration dates that extended past authorized stay dates, after Duffy threatened to pull $160 million in federal highway funds.
Separately, an investigative reporter writing for a trucking industry trade publication, FreightWaves, published a story Thursday morning calling the tragedy in Jay County indicative of a well-known regulatory and enforcement issue with so-called "chameleon carriers" - freight carriers that dodge regulation by posing behind a series of shell businesses.
Writer Rob Carpenter said the logo on the truck driven by Beishekeev belonged to a network of companies with bad safety records and linked ownership that he has spent months investigating. He reports that each company in the network is registered under a Kyrgyzstani name and traces back to a company called Sam Express Corp., based in Illinois. The network of freight carriers has a record of nearly 100 crashes and numerous FMCSA violations and failed inspections during the period he investigated, Carpenter reports.
"This is the textbook definition of what FMCSA calls a chameleon carrier network: multiple authorities sharing equipment, drivers, and management, while maintaining separate DOT numbers so that, when one accumulates too many violations or crashes, they can shift operations to another," the article explains. "According to the Government Accountability Office, chameleon carriers are three times more likely to be involved in serious crashes than legitimate operators."
"It's sad. This isn't the first case," said Dave Schroyer of Celina about fatal accidents linked to alleged chameleon carriers. "There's been several of these that have started making national news in the last year."
The son of George Schroyer Jr., a venerable figure in the transportation industry who died in 2008, Dave Schroyer is still active in tucking. The family trucking business, founded in 1964 just north of Celina, became Grammer Logistic's Celina terminal in 2012.
Dave and his brother Craig maintain ownership of the 12-acre site.
Schroyer was distraught over the news about the head-on collision in Jay County that left four dead and two hospitalized, taking aim at chameleon carriers in general.
"They're pretty well-known, and that guy has done a lot of homework," Schroyer said of the network of companies highlighted in Carpenter's story.
Companies that operate commercial vehicles transporting passengers or hauling cargo in interstate commerce must be registered with the FMCSA and have a USDOT number, according to the FMCSA website.
"Those companies come in and it's easy to get your DOT number. We have to have a USDOT number. Every carrier has to have that," he explained. "Anybody can apply and get that, but they have to prove that they have insurance, and then they're supposed to follow all the federal laws."
Many of the trucking startups are foreign to begin with, Schroyer said.
"And then they put these foreign drivers in driving for them," he said. "They're foreigners, from top to bottom."
Such unscrupulous outfits, he said, have hurt the trucking industry financially.
"They'll haul freight cheaper than anybody else will, so it's really hurt the industry," he said. "They don't pay those guys anything."
Asked by the newspaper, Schroyer offered his thoughts on how Beishekeev, an alleged undocumented immigrant, was able to get his CDL in Pennsylvania.
"The Biden Administration was letting those guys come in and giving them like work visas, and then they were letting them get CDLs," he opined. "They (the Trump administration) are tightening it up."
Overall, Schroyer has seen the quality of truck driving decline across the nation, a trend he said has escalated over the last five years.
"If you travel and you're like me, in the trucking business, you see it everywhere, and they scare you, just watching them maneuver and drive."
Schroyer believes a subset of truck drivers aren't getting the high standard of training that once defined the industry.
"They're not getting that and I don't understand that," he said. "Today to get a CDL in the United States, you have to go through training, and I think a lot of these foreigners, there's been a lot of these truck driving schools that I assume were getting paid to pass these guys."
Schroyer also commented on whether those who earn their CDL in Ohio are qualified to drive on roadways.
"In our rural area, I would say yes," he said. "As you get up in Cleveland and Columbus, I don't know."
The crash in Jay County remains under investigation by the Indiana State Police Critical Incident Reconstruction Team, the Indiana State Police Commercial Vehicle Division and the Jay County Sheriff's Office.
The van destroyed in the crash was driven by 55-year-old Donald Stipp of Portland and carrying five Amish passengers. Stipp was in critical condition at Miami Valley Hospital on Thursday.
Kristyn Fisher/The Commercial Review
