Investigators knew who was driving in a recent drunk-driving crash with serious injuries, but for some time they had no idea who he was.

As we reported, Carlos Hernandez-Hernandez was sentenced Friday for the head-on crash south of St. Joseph that sent a Faucett woman to the hospital with extensive injuries.

Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office Captain Shawn Collie said it took some time and effort to determine who they were dealing with back in March when they investigated the crash.

The suspect had no valid driver’s license. He told authorities at the scene that his name was Vincento Guillermo Sontay. Captain Collie says that through further investigation and a fingerprint check via the federal government’s office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they determined his real name, the name used in court documents.

“We determined his name after further conversations through an interpreter,” Collie said. “After a fingerprint check, we confirmed that he was a citizen of Guatemala, that he did not have permission to be in the United States, and that he had been deported twice.”

Collie says identifying suspects in this manner is a time-consuming process that often drags many different resources into the investigations, both from within and outside the Sheriff’s Department.

“It gets even more complicated when you have to deal with ID theft and fraudulent documents,” Collie said, “but essentially we’re still doing what we’ve always done.”

“It hasn’t changed that much.”

ICE has placed a hold on Hernandez-Hernandez, but will not gain custody until after he serves his prison sentence within the Missouri Dept. of Corrections..