The thirteen people killed in southern California on Tuesday in a collision between their overloaded vehicle and a heavy truck are believed to have entered the United States illegally from Mexico through a breach in a fence separating the two countries, authorities said Wednesday (March 3rd).
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The victims were traveling in a Ford Expedition SUV designed to carry only eight to nine people, but a total of twenty-five individuals were in the vehicle, with the two back seats removed.
Twelve people, including the driver, were killed in the collision with the semi-trailer and a thirteenth a little later after being taken to hospital.
"All are suspected of having entered the United States illegally
,
"
the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement.
The federal agency specifies that it has opened an investigation into human trafficking linked to this tragedy and to another accident which had involved another SUV earlier on Tuesday that caught fire in the same area.
When CBP agents arrived at the scene of the fire, they discovered
"19 individuals hiding in the nearby brush and established that they had entered the country illegally through the breach,"
the federal agency explains. .
Read also: California: 13 dead in collision between crowded vehicle and heavy truck
CCTV footage taken early Tuesday morning shows two vehicles leaving the area near a three-meter-wide breach in the metal fence that stands at the Mexican border, some fifty kilometers from the scene of the collision, near Holtville.
According to Gregory Bovino, sector manager for CBP, the first elements of the investigation into the accident vehicle and the one that caught fire both point to this breach.
"Human traffickers have repeatedly shown that they care little for human life,"
he said in the statement, citing similar
"tragedies" that have
occurred in the past.
The victims who died on Tuesday are between 20 and 55 years old, but at least one of the injured passengers was a minor, aged 16.
According to an official in Mexico's foreign affairs secretariat, at least ten of those who died were Mexican nationals.
