Two dead in freighter filled with immigrants
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Responders prep for mass casualty incident after driver abandons truck beside IH-35
Members of the La Salle County Fire Rescue come to the aid of undocumented immigrants who require emergency medical attention after escaping from the back of a freight truck trailer on Friday night. Helicopter and ambulance transport was dispatched for the urgent cases. The sheriff’s office estimates at least a hundred people were being smuggled in the truck.
When a motorist on IH-35 called the emergency dispatch office late Friday, June 3, to report having spotted a large group of people climbing out of a freight truck, La Salle County first responders began prepping for a potential mass-casualty incident.
Ultimately, two of at least a hundred undocumented immigrants who had been packed into a refrigerated box trailer died as a result of their mistreatment, one was airlifted by medical helicopter, and others were transported to Frio Regional Hospital by ambulance.
At the La Salle County Sheriff’s Office, Lt. Homar Olivarez said this week that he believes the total number of those who were being smuggled north from the border may never be known, as the more able-bodied succeeded in fleeing into the brush.
Among the first on the scene at Artesia Wells shortly after 11 p.m. Friday was La Salle Cpl. Jose Avila, who drove up to a chaotic scene in which men, women and youths had begun escaping from the box trailer, some of them too exhausted to flee, some lying on the road, and others ducking into the shadows.
All of those who have been apprehended since Friday night have been identified as undocumented immigrants.
Cpl. Avila summoned back-up from the La Salle Fire Rescue and the US Border Patrol, and called for more manpower from the sheriff’s office.
Reports from the scene indicate the unidentified driver of the freight rig had steered off the highway at Artesia Wells and abandoned his human cargo. He has yet to be located, and the investigation continues into where he collected his passengers and who organized the huge smuggling effort.
An immigrant couple embraces in the red and blue glow of emergency vehicle lights on the IH-35 access road after surviving a smuggling ordeal of several hours locked in a refrigerated box trailer. The La Salle County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to the scene Friday night and discovered dozens of smuggled immigrants climbing out of the vehicle. Two had died and several others required hospitalization.
Investigations into the smuggling crime are now being conducted by the US Department of Homeland Security and the Texas Rangers, assisted by the US Border Patrol and the sheriff’s office.
Responders are still reeling from the number of immigrants they encountered at the scene and the conditions in which they had been transported, Olivarez said.
“When Corporal Avila drove up to the scene, he saw as many as fifty people sitting or lying on the road,” the lieutenant said. “They began to scatter, and Avila and other officers were able to track some in the brush and bring them into custody, but others have fled.
“We are talking about dozens of people here,” Lt. Olivarez said. “Avila observed that some of the immigrants were injured, and some just stayed behind… and then he discovered one dead inside the trailer and one dead on the ground outside.”
The two men were pronounced dead at the scene by Justice of the Peace Janie Megliorino. The Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office is conducting autopsies and will determine their cause of death, the lieutenant said.
Three ambulances and a medical evacuation helicopter were en route to the scene while Avila and other responders began attempting a head count of those who had been corralled, according to the sheriff’s office in its statement on the incident, and “at least forty people were apprehended that night.”
By Saturday afternoon, the number of immigrants taken into custody from the box trailer had reached approximately a hundred, the lieutenant said.
“We estimate that the passengers had been in the trailer for several hours when they finally managed to escape,” Olivarez said. “It is reasonable to assume that the conditions under which they were being transported were hazardous to all.”
Olivarez added that he and his fellow officers view the mass transport as a further step in the progressively inhumane handling of undocumented immigrants by so-called coyotes, who are paid to smuggle men, women and children through South Texas.
Earlier this year, officers pursued a freight truck through La Salle County and into Cotulla’s residential neighborhoods until it crashed, and more than sixty undocumented immigrants were found in the tanker trailer.
“This is a sad reflection of current conditions on the border,” Olivarez said, “and of the mistreatment of immigrants by those who stand to profit.”
If captured, the driver in the case may face first-degree felony charges related to the deaths of his passengers as well as serious injury to others, in addition to at least a hundred third-degree felony charges for human smuggling. If any of the travelers are identified as being under the age of 17, charges for their smuggling are enhanced to second-degree felony.
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