{"id":19779,"date":"2025-10-30T15:06:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/19779\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T15:06:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:06:21","slug":"ice-deports-bou-khathavong-who-was-involved-in-the-1994-murder-of-teenager-eddie-polec-in-philly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/19779\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE deports Bou Khathavong, who was involved in the 1994 murder of teenager Eddie Polec in Philly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers announced<\/a> on Tuesday that they had deported a man with ties to the 1994 murder of Eddie Polec, a Philadelphia high schooler.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bou Khathavong, who was found guilty of criminal conspiracy in 1996, was deported to Laos in early September \u2014 45 years after he legally entered the United States.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Philly will use a record budget surplus to face funding uncertainties, Mayor Parker says<\/a><\/p>\n

“We sincerely hope that the removal of Bou Khathavong can finally help the family of Eddie Polec and the city of Philadelphia heal from one of the most horrifying crimes in Philadelphia’s history,” David O’Neill, acting field office director for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations in Philadelphia, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

In November 1994, Polec, who was 16, was beaten to death by a group of teenagers from Abington High School with baseball bats while he was waiting for his brother outside St. Cecilia, a Catholic Church in Fox Chase.<\/p>\n

Khathavong, who was 17 at the time, was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and possession of an instrument of crime, but he was only convicted of a criminal conspiracy charge.\u00a0During his sentencing in March 1996, he was given a minimum of five years and a maximum of 10 years in prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In February, 1996, the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued an immigration detainer on Khathavong, which required Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Holmesburg to notify the agency before releasing him. Two years later, he was charged as an aggravated felon by INS since he never obtained citizenship.<\/p>\n

In 2004, an immigration judge in York ordered for\u00a0Khathavong\u00a0to be deported, but he was released from prison on an order of supervision in 2005.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ICE officials say the man was sent to Laos on Sept. 2 after “years of legal hurdles.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Polec’s murder drew national attention, partially because\u00a0Philadelphia’s 911 dispatchers<\/a>\u00a0were\u00a0reportedly giving apathetic responses to numerous callers. It took around 40 minutes until the first police car arrived to the scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In response to public backlash, former Mayor Ed Rendell fired three of the operators<\/a> on duty that night, disciplined three more and assigned a commission to overhaul the city’s emergency dispatch system \u2014 improving the training, equipment and funding for that department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers announced on Tuesday that they had deported a man with ties to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13814,449,31,13815,741,783,69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-19779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-conspiracy","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-deportation","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-murder","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","16":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}