Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said the search for "affluenza teen" Ethan Couch has intensified in Texas, with his office following "hundreds and hundreds" of leads on the suspect who escaped jail time in 2013 after a deadly DUI incident and now has violated probation.
Couch, 18, was believed to be one the run, possibly with his mother Tonya Couch, said the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
"Some of the leads we get are not really useful at all," Anderson said a news conference with Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson on Monday. "But we don't want that to discourage people from sending in tips. We want any information anyone thinks is good for us."
Authorities said they added Tonya Couch, 48, to a missing persons list Sunday, allowing them to get "a leg up on getting her into the national computer system."
"(Ethan Couch) continues to believe the law doesn't apply to him, which is how he was raised," said Anderson, according to the
Dallas Morning News. "If he has enough money, he can get out of it."
Police are searching for Tonya Couch's 2011 Ford F150 Harley Davidson edition pickup truck with 23-inch chrome wheels.
"As a juvenile being on probation, the problem is that he's not here," Wilson said, according to the Star-Telegram. "They have to ask permission to leave the county. ... Yes, it's a violation of his probation."
Ethan Couch was 16 when a Tarrant County juvenile court judge gave him 10 years on probation after he hit a group of people in a drunken driving crash, killing four and leaving a fifth person paralyzed, said
WFAA-TV.
A psychologist testified in his trial that Couch suffered from so-called "affluenza" because his family's wealth and a dysfunctional relationship with his parents left him without a sense of responsibility, said the Morning News.
Ethan and Tonya Couch, who is now divorced, went missing after a video appeared on Twitter earlier this month showing the younger Couch reportedly at a beer pong party, a possible probation violation, noted WFAA-TV.
Ethan Couch's father has been cooperating with the investigation, authorities told the Morning News.
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