An American soldier who fled England after an accident pleaded guilty in a British court

The Kidderminster Magistrates Court building in Kidderminster, England, where Texas Army National Guard soldier Isac Calderon pleaded guilty on October 10, 2024, to causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Calderon, who fled the country after a road accident in July 2023, will appear at Worcester Crown Court next month. (Rept0n1x/Wikimedia Commons)

A Texas Army National Guard soldier extradited from the US to England over a serious road accident will go on trial in November after pleading guilty in a British court this week.

Isac Alejandro Calderon, who the army says holds the rank of specialist, was charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving. He pleaded guilty at Kidderminster Magistrates Court on Thursday, according to a statement from West Mercia Police to Stars and Stripes on Friday.

The statement said he would be sentenced on November 7 at Worcester Crown Court. A Sky News report from July puts his age at 23.

Attempts to contact the Texas National Guard to ask what unit and duty station Calderon was assigned to at the time were not immediately successful.

Calderon fled back to the United States about four months after the July 31, 2023 head-on collision near Shucknall, a rural area less than 50 miles from the Welsh border.

Elizabeth Donowho, a British nurse, suffered multiple fractures in an accident and was temporarily unable to walk.

Calderon was also injured in the crash and had to be treated in hospital, West Mercia Police said. Then – according to the statement – he appeared for questioning at the police, as a result he was not arrested and was allowed to keep his passport.

Calderon told authorities he did not plan to return to the US until March 2024, but on November 25, 2023, he left the country just before his scheduled trial date, the BBC reported, citing court documents from the extradition hearing.

An arrest warrant was issued in December 2023. Case records show Calderon returned to Texas because he did not have enough money to stay in England.

Witnesses saw him passing vehicles at high speed on the A4103 before the accident, the BBC and Sky News report, citing court documents. The Sky News report also said he told authorities he had been vaping in the car and that his driving was “definitely not safe.”

Court documents show that Calderon said he had “no knowledge of British road markings at all” and was unaware that solid white lines marked a no-pass zone, Sky News reports.

In August, U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Bray ordered Calderon’s extradition, stating that it was “virtually impossible for Calderon to appear in court on his own in the United Kingdom,” the BBC reported.

It is unclear what Calderon was doing in England at the time. Police told Donowho he was visiting a British special forces base in nearby Herefordshire, according to Sky News.

However, that report also indicated that Calderon told authorities that he was traveling “for personal reasons” when the accident occurred.

The case in England follows the story of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US diplomat, who fled back to the US after a crash near RAF Croughton in 2019 that killed a British teenager.