At least 11 people died Wednesday when a pickup truck carrying 30 people crashed in the Encino community of Brooks County, Texas, according to local authorities.
County Sheriff Urbino Martinez said
the vehicle is believed to be carrying immigrants, likely without documents
.
Among the objects they found were things that migrants usually carry with them, such as water, food and clothing for the trip, explained Christopher Olivares, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety.
The identities of the injured passengers have not been released.
Another 13 people who were traveling in the van were injured
, although their condition is unknown.
The driver died at the scene.
The Encino, Texas, crash site of a pickup truck carrying 25 people believed to be migrants. Codi via Twitter
Authorities believe the truck, a 15-passenger white Ford,
rolled over around a curve and ended up crashing into a pole, likely due to being overloaded.
It is unknown to whom the truck was registered, where it came from and what its destination was.
They also assured that the crashed vehicle was not being pursued by the police.
The accident occurred shortly after 4:00 p.m. local time on Interstate 281, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of McAllen.
[The truck with 25 people that crashed in California crossed a breach in the wall, according to the Border Patrol]
Encino is a community of about 140 residents about 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) south of the Falfurrias Border Patrol checkpoint.
Videos on social media from the crash site show Border Patrol vehicles, as well as local law enforcement and first aid agencies that rushed to the scene.
Some of the injured have been airlifted to hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley area, including the CHRISTUS Spohn Medical Center in Corpus Christi.
One of the people injured in Encino, Texas, is taken to a hospital in Corpus Christi.
At least 11 were killed and 13 were injured.
The accident comes less than five months after the tragic crash in the border city of Del Rio, Texas, in which eight migrants died in a van carrying 10 people, when it was being pursued by police.
Immigration authorities have warned on multiple occasions of the dangers of traveling in vehicles that exceed their capacity -
a common practice of coyotes -
because they not only make it more unstable, but there are not enough seat belts in the event of an accident, which which dramatically raises the death rate.
In early March, a van with 25 migrants crashed in California's Imperial Valley, killing 13 people in one of the worst traffic accidents in that border region.
On that occasion, the human smugglers who transported the migrants removed the seats of the vehicle with capacity for eight passengers to be able to insert more occupants.
Authorities determined that this was one of the reasons why many fled with nothing to stop them when the vehicle crashed.
Soon more information ...
