At least eight people are dead after an SUV plowed into a group of migrant workers waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, and indications are the act could very well have been deliberate.
Brownsville police investigator Martin Sandoval said the crash happened about 8:30 a.m. local time. The driver, Sandoval said, is a Hispanic male who was hospitalized for treatment of injuries before being taken in to police custody on charges of reckless driving. More charges are expected soon, he said.
Sandoval said the cause of the crash has not been determined, but that police are awaiting results from a blood sample taken from the driver to see if he was under the influence. The driver, apparently injured when his silver Range Rover overturned in the crash, is not cooperating with officers and had not yet been identified, he said.
The death toll climbed by one Sunday after a victim succumbed to their injuries at the hospital, Mayor Trey Mendez said Sunday evening in a statement. “We have had one more casualty as one of the injured tragically passed away from their injuries at the hospital,” Mendez said. “The total lives lost is currently 8 and several more remain critical.”
Luis Herrera, who was among those hit by the SUV, said in an interview that many of the victims already had tickets out of Brownsville, some to reunite with their families. Herrera, 33, who suffered a broken arm and was released from the hospital Sunday afternoon, said the driver was taunting people standing at the bus stop, driving past them and yelling insults.
“He crossed the street and he hit the gas and he drove by my legs, and hurt my arm,” he said in Spanish. “The others, he killed almost all of them.”
He recalled the driver yelling: “You’re invading my property!”
Sandoval said the driver allegedly ran a red light and plowed into a group of people standing at a local bus stop in this border city in southeastern Texas. The victims were standing outside the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center, a migrant and homeless shelter in the border town.
Those injured were taken to hospitals, Sandoval said, including one who was airlifted.
“He just hit the people,” he said.
Police were still trying to confirm the names and ages of the victims. Sandoval said some were migrants from Venezuela who recently crossed the border. The bus stop serves migrants and U.S. citizens in this city of 190,000 residents.
“This is a public bus stop,” he said. “So we don’t know if some residents of ours were there.”
Police are awaiting help from the U.S. Border Patrol to identify the victims, since some may have been recently processed at the border. “Definitely, there were some migrants there,” Sandoval said.
The homeless shelter had been housing several recent border crossers. Brownsville is one of the areas receiving large numbers of migrants as the federal government prepares to lift pandemic travel restrictions Thursday and reopen the border to asylum seekers.
Video obtained by The Washington Post showed the driver running the red light about 100 feet away from where the victims were waiting for a bus.
Witnesses said the driver tried to run away afterward, Victor Maldonado, director of the Ozanam center, told The Post. But the witnesses stopped him from leaving the scene, Maldonado added. Some witnesses said he appeared to be driving under the influence, Maldonado said.
Maybe the driver was drunk, maybe he wasn't, but eight people are dead, several of them migrant workers. We still have a gun problem for sure, but yeah, there are other ways to commit mass killings in America.
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