Man involved in Wilton motel death sentenced for illegal immigration

PHOTOGRAPHER: Marc Schultz

The Crest Inn in Wilton is where Daniel Antonio Salas-Miranda shot and killed another guest.

A Mexican man who was convicted in Saratoga County last year of causing an accidental shooting death at a Wilton motel has been sentenced to federal prison time for re-entering the United States illegally more than a decade ago.

Daniel Antonio Salas-Miranda, 41, a citizen of Mexico, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Albany Thursday to 24 months in prison for illegally re-entering the United States, with the sentence to be served only after he completes a state prison term for the shooting.

Federal prosecutors said Salas-Miranda admitted as part of his guilty plea that he is a citizen of Mexico, and that he was removed from the United States to Mexico on No. 20, 2002, June 3, 2008 and again on June 18, 2008. On two occasions, Salas-Miranda had been arrested by immigration authorities in New Jersey, and on one occasion he was arrested by Border Patrol in Arizona after he entered the United States without inspection from Mexico.

Salas-Miranda came to the attention of immigration authorities most recently because state police interviewed him on Oct. 12, 2018, while conducting an investigation into a shooting at the Crest Inn motel in Wilton, where both Salas-Miranda and shooting victim Michael Kornacki were staying. Kornnacki was in a room next to Salas-Miranda’s when Salas-Miranda fired a gun, sending a bullet through the wall into the next room and killing Kornacki. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detained him after his fingerprints taken as part of the investigation turned up in an ICE database.

The motel shooting incident was already unusual, and received heightened attention because the Crest Inn was owned by the family of Nauman Hussain, who owned the limousine company involved in the Schoharie limousine crash that killed 20 people on Oct. 6, 2018. Hussain now faces criminal charges in connection with the crash, and the Crest Inn has since been shut down for health code violations.

On April 9, 2019, Salas-Miranda pleaded guilty in Saratoga County Court to criminal possession of a weapon and criminally negligent homicide, and was sentenced to up to 10 years in state prison, though he could be released in less than five years.

U.S. District Court Judge Mae A. D’Agostino directed that the federal sentence run consecutively to the New York state sentence, meaning he won’t start it until after he finishes his state sentence. The 24-month federal sentence is the maximum permitted by law, said U.S. Attorney Grant Jaquith.

Salas-Miranda remains subject to deportation at the end of his prison sentences.