Immigrants were locked in cloned truck toolboxes, officers say

PROTECTED CONTENT

If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.

Lost your password?

Username and Password Help

Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.

← Back

Teen driver in custody

Erik Rojas

A teenager from Bulverde was remanded to the La Salle County Jail on Thursday morning, May 30, on felony charges after being found at the wheel of a cloned transport department truck containing several undocumented immigrants.
A report from the La Salle County Sheriff’s Office indicates Sgt. Richard Gonzales was conducting routine patrols on IH-35 early Thursday when he spotted the vehicle traveling north from Cotulla at Milemarker 71 and noted that the late-model Dodge pickup truck had been painted and equipped to resemble a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) work truck.
The truck bore official-looking decals, safety lights and reflective stripes, and was carrying a road barricade in its cargo bed.
During a 7:30 a.m. roadside interview with the driver, identified as Erik Ramon Rojas, 17, the sheriff’s sergeant spotted the bodies of two adults partially concealed on the floor between the front and rear seats of the crew-cab truck.

Officers examining the vehicle then discovered that the tool boxes mounted on the rear of the vehicle had been adapted to accommodate more people.
In a brief statement on the case this week, La Salle Investigator Homar Olivarez said officers at the scene of the traffic stop were alarmed at the conditions in which the immigrants were being transported.
“Not only were these tool boxes extremely cramped, and people had been put inside them, but they had been locked from the outside,” Olivarez said. “There were no means for the occupants of the back of that truck to escape.”
No serious injuries have been reported in the case. The undocumented immigrants were turned over to the custody of the US Border Patrol Laredo Sector, who agents assisted with other sheriff’s deputies at the scene.
The cloned truck has been impounded at the sheriff’s yard in Cotulla.
Rojas was held at the county jail on five counts of third-degree felony human smuggling and released on bond Friday afternoon.