By Sonia Perez
Associated Press
The 53 migrants who suffocated to death in the truck found a week ago abandoned on a San Antonio highway have already been identified, according to the forensic authorities of the Texas county of Bexar.
Another 16 occupants of the truck, undocumented immigrants who were being coyoted across the border, were able to survive.
Among them is Yénifer Yulisa Cardona Tomás, a Guatemalan woman who saved her life by sitting near the door.
Migrants in San Antonio demand justice for victims killed inside the truck
July 3, 202202:20
Cardona, 20, got into the truck on the morning of June 27.
"I told a friend not to go all the way in and we stayed at the beginning, in the same place, without moving," she explained.
The young woman remembers that little by little she was leaning on someone inside the trailer trailer and she lost consciousness.
"Then I woke up in the hospital," Cardona told The Associated Press by telephone from the Metropolitan Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, where she was admitted.
Upon entering the trailer, the coyotes seized the migrants' cell phones and sprinkled the floor of the van with spices — she believes it was chicken broth — so that Border Patrol surveillance dogs would not detect them, the young woman explained.
"That itched a lot in the body," Cardona assured the agency.
[Sisters migrated to the US but did not reach their destination. One was a victim of the 'death truck']
The young woman stated that there were about 70 people in the truck and that, as the heat increased, they were crowding at the exit of the trailer, right where she was.
The trailer made several additional stops to pick up migrants.
"People were screaming, some were crying. Especially the women were asking him to stop and open the doors because the truck was hot and they couldn't breathe," he recalled.
According to Cardona, someone who he assumes was the driver told them that they would arrive soon.
“There are 20 minutes left, six minutes,” the woman explained, quoting what she told them. “People were asking for water.
Some are finished.
Others did carry," said the young woman, who was hospitalized for eight days and expected to be discharged this Monday.
The driver, identified as Homero Zamorano Jr., 45, and three other people were arrested and charged in the tragedy.
The migrants "were cooking in that trailer": a doctor who attended the emergency says that it smelled "cooked"
July 1, 202202:34
The Guatemalan government indicated that 20 of the dead migrants are citizens of that country;
of them, 16 have already been identified.
Cardona had told her family that she wanted to go to work in the United States after graduating as a secretary, but she was unemployed, according to her father, Mynor Cordón, recalls.
The man paid a coyote $4,000 to get his daughter to her destination in North Carolina.
He left Guatemala on May 30 and traveled in cars and trucks before getting on the truck.
"I did not know that she would travel in the trailer. She told us that she would go on foot, it seems that it was at the last moment that the traffickers decided to take her, along with two more friends, who survived. One of them is still in critical condition," he said. .
[They are “traders of death”: archbishop sends message to 'coyotes' of the tragedy in Texas]
"You are a blessing".
Survivor of the 'death truck' speaks with her parents in Guatemala
July 2, 202200:28
Cardona crossed the Rio Grande a few days before the tragedy and was locked in a warehouse inside US territory.
The last message she sent to her parents was on Monday, June 27, at 11:28 a.m. in Texas.
“In an hour we are going out,” she wrote.
The parents learned of the tragedy at 9 p.m. that day, but did not hear from their daughter until two days later, when relatives in the United States learned that she was in a hospital.
"We cried so much, even I was already thinking about where we were going to watch over her and bury her. She is a miracle," her father celebrated.
