A Phoenix man who once gave a teenager the gun used to shoot the man’s four-year-old in the head has been arrested on federal charges after serving as the self-described middleman in a human smuggling attempt that ended in tragedy last month.
Jose Carlos Adame Solis is charged in U.S. District Court with conspiracy to transport illegal aliens for financial gain. He was taken into custody April 20 after a weekslong investigation of a multiple fatality accident near Why on March 2.
Adame, 24, was released on his own recognizance following a detention hearing last Friday. He faces 20 years or more in prison due to the deaths which occurred during a smuggling offense.
According to public records, the Tohono O’odham Police Department received a report around 11 p.m. on March 2 of a serious two-vehicle crash at the intersection of State Route 86 and Federal Route 1 (FR-1) in western Pima County.
One of the vehicles, a Dodge Journey traveling north on Federal Road 1, was found to be involved in human smuggling when it crashed into a Ford F150 heading eastbound on State Route 86.
All occupants of the F150 died as a result of the crash, as did the Dodge driver. Two passengers in the Dodge were airlifted in critical condition for medical treatment.
Special Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) were later able to interview the Dodge’s front seat passenger and determine the passenger was also involved in human smuggling.
But HSI made an even bigger discovery – a phone number, nickname (“Ayesick”), and message records which identified the person who coordinated getting the Dodge to an area near the border to pick up undocumented non-citizens (UNCs).
That coordinator, federal court documents show, was Adame. Those documents also show Adame was in communications with and providing directions to the Dodge driver and front seat passenger.
“At approximately 10:55 PM, ‘Ayesick’ messaged the passenger to drive eastbound on SR-86 to FR-15,” the criminal complaint notes. “The times of phone activity in the form of the screenshot of route of travel and discussion of the route of travel, along with the cessation of phone activity coincided with the approximate accident time of 11:00 pm and the subsequent arrival of first responders.”
Investigators also found three notifications on the locked screen of the driver’s cellphone for WhatsApp messages from Ayesick.
HSI Special Agents were later granted two federal search warrants, one for real-time precision-location (GPS) information for Ayesick’s phone, which was registered to Jose Solis at an address in Phoenix where Adame was living. The second search warrant was for historical cell site information.
Surveillance was then conducted on multiple occasions at and near Adame’s residence. He was eventually taken into custody April 20, at which time Adame was provided a Miranda warning.
The federal criminal complaint provides a summary of Adame’s comments to investigators, including his admission that on March 2 he received a call from the Dodge driver looking for “work,” which Adame admitted referred to transporting illegal aliens.
Around the same time, Adame was contacted by someone on Facebook asking if he knew anyone who wanted to make quick money.
Adame went on to tell investigator he “became the middleman for means of communication” between the driver and passenger of the Dodge and the unnamed person from Facebook.
“ADAME SOLIS stated that he received directions via geolocation pins from (the Facebook user) and would forward them first to the driver and then, later in the event, to the passenger,” according to the complaint. “ADAME SOLIS stated that he was in communication with driver and the passenger until the crash.”
When the Facebook user notified Adame that the Dodge had crashed, Adame told the agents he called the passenger. The two “briefly spoke” with Adame describing the passenger as seeming “out of it.”
Adame’s charges in connection with the human smuggling incident is not his first arrest. In April 2020, he was arrested after his 4-year-old son was unintentionally shot in the head by Adame’s teenaged brother.
The gun used in the shooting belonged to Adame, who admitted to Phoenix PD officers he allowed his 15-year-old brother to handle the firearm.
The child was hospitalized in critical condition and Adame was arrested for reckless endangerment. The Arizona Department of Child Safety qualified the incident as a “near fatality” and substantiated an allegation of neglect against Adame.
Although Adame was arrested, public access files for multiple court systems do not show whether the matter was ever prosecuted. The child was later released to his parents after DCS assessed the boy would be “safe in the care” of his parents.