Traffic accident leaves several dead in California 0:45
(CNN) -
A pickup truck packed with people crashed into a semi-trailer in a rural California county near the Mexican border Tuesday morning, killing at least a dozen and others hospitalized, authorities said.
At least 10 Mexican nationals died in the accident, the Mexican consulate said in a statement.
Law enforcement officers work at the scene of a fatal accident in California, not far from the Mexican border.
CNN has blurred a part of this image.
Aerial video in Imperial County shows the brutal aftermath of the accident, with the semi-trailer crashing into the left side of a Ford Expedition pickup.
Both vehicles ended up on the edge of a rural road 10 miles north of the border.
Traffic accident in Imperial, California, leaves several dead
Hospital and police officials gave slightly different figures for injuries and deaths in the incident.
California Highway Patrol Border Division Chief Omar Watson said in a morning briefing that there were 25 occupants in the truck during the crash and that 13 were killed, including the driver.
“It would be premature of me to speculate about what happened in this collision.
The important thing is that 13 people died in this accident, "he said in a second update to the media.
"We owe it to the families of the dead and injured, as well as the public, to carry out a full and thorough investigation."
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A Ford Expedition can typically safely seat up to eight people.
But this vehicle had no rear seats, Watson said.
"I don't know if they were cut or removed, I'm not sure, but they weren't in the vehicle," Watson said.
"Which indicates that there were not enough seat belts for the passengers."
Mexican consulate officials said they were saddened by the news and are working to confirm the nationalities of the other three passengers who died.
Mexican authorities will provide assistance to families affected by the accident, according to the statement.
Watson previously said that it is unknown where all the people in the truck are from.
Some had no identification.
The driver was from the Mexican city of Mexicali, he said.
"We are close to the border, so we have people who come and go every day to work," he said.
US authorities are working with the Mexican consulate to determine who was in the vehicle and notify the closest family members.
Special agents from the Homeland Security Investigations office in San Diego are investigating whether it is a human trafficking case, a spokeswoman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service told CNN in a statement.
Accident in California: tragic scene
Watson described a gruesome scene in which some occupants were ejected from the vehicle and died, while others were found dead inside the van.
He said 12 people died at the scene of the collision and one person died in a hospital.
Police received a call about the accident around 6:15 a.m. Tuesday.
At the time of the accident, the semitrailer was traveling north on State Highway 115 and the Expedition was traveling west on Norrish Road.
Watson said it is unknown if the Expedition stopped at a stop sign, but the truck entered the intersection in front of the semitrailer, causing the collision.
The passengers in the van were between the ages of 15 and 53, Watson said at a third news conference.
Judy Cruz, managing director of the emergency room department at El Centro Regional Medical Center, had previously said that the vehicle had 28 occupants and that 15 had died.
"As you can imagine, patients are having a difficult time," said Adolphe Edward, executive director of El Centro Regional Medical Center.
"This was a serious accident and we are treating them in the emergency room."
Edward recommended not referring to the injured as "undocumented" and noted that a member of the Mexican consulate was present at a press conference with hospital officials.
The semi-trailer driver, who is 69 years old, suffered moderate injuries.
The trailers it was towing were not loaded, Watson said.
The injured occupants were taken to El Centro Regional Medical Center, Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs and Pioneers Memorial Hospital in nearby Brawley.
UC San Diego Health said it received three patients transferred from El Centro by air ambulance.
Three of the four patients being treated at Desert Regional Medical Center were in the intensive care unit, the hospital's communications director Todd Burke told CNN.
At least one of the injured passengers in the van was released from the hospital, Watson said.
This is a story in development and details such as the number of deaths, the number of occupants in the van, and the number of injuries may continue to change.
CNN's Steve Almasy, Priscilla Alvarez, Jaqueline Hurtado, and Paul P. Murphy contributed to this report.
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