San Antonio trailer deaths: Driver Homero Zamorano in court as photos show migrant truck at border
The 45-year-old truck driver is charged with one count of alien smuggling resulting in death
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Four people, including alleged truck driver Homero Zamorano Jr, have been charged in connection to the San Antonio migrant deaths, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.
The 45-year-old is charged with one count of alien smuggling resulting in death. He is from Brownsville but based in Pasadena, Texas, according to officials. He could face up to life in prison or the death penalty.
Three others were charged as well, including Christian Martinez, who allegedly discussed the smuggling plan in a call with Mr Zamorano, and Mexican nationals Juan Claudio and Juan Francisco D’Luna Mendez, who were found because their address was used to register the tractor-trailer that smuggled the migrants.
At least 53 people were discovered dead, “stacked” inside the truck’s tractor-trailer near San Antonio, Texas, in what authorities believe may be the deadliest human-trafficking incident in modern US history.
The alleged driver, Mr Zamorano, was high on meth when he was arrested and had a past history of drug use and arrests, according to family members.
Guatemala, Mexico families talk about sons after tragedy
Families of some of the youngest migrants mourned the deaths of their young sons who were setting off to the US with dreams of making big and helping the family there before their life came to a tragic end before their destination.
The family of Wilmer Tulul, 14, and Melvin Guachiac, 13, the two cousins in Nahuala, Guatemala, said that they left home with dreams in their eyes to learn English and reunite with family.
“My grandson said he had a dream,” Wilmer’s grandmother Pascuala Sipac said, speaking in Quiche through a translator. “He made the journey but (the dream) never arrived.”
The two died along with 53 people in the deadliest US human smuggling tragedy on record.
The family members confirmed their deaths after seeing their photos sent from San Antonio morgue
The family of sons Jair, 19, and Yovani, 16, in Atexquilapan in eastern Mexico, are still waiting for closure with some information about their sons. Their parents are convinced that they were on the truck after they last talked to them on Monday morning.
“It’s very difficult for me to think about everything they went through,” said Yolanda Olivares. “It’s consuming me from the inside not knowing about them.”
Reuters
The other tragedy in Texas
As San Antonio grappled with scores of dead migrants, residents of the Texas border town of Uvalde are still struggling for closure after the historic mass school shooting there in May, which killed 21 people.
Photographer Billy Calzada of the San Antonio Express News captured the frustration of parents and community members at a meeting on Thursday as they sought answers from local officials about police failings during the attack.
Migrant smuggler didn’t realise trailer’s AC had stopped working, complaint says
One of the accused in the deadliest smuggling tragedy in US history has told a government informant that the driver did not know that the AC unit of the packed trailer had stopped working, a filing Texas federal court said.
Christian Martinez, 28, who has been charged with conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants leading to death, sent the messages to the driver of the vehicle on Monday — about six hour before the tragedy — purporting to show a truck manifest.
The truck driver was previously identified as Homero Zamorano Jr, 45, but his name was redacted in the complaint.
Mr Martinez also texted GPS coordinates to an address in Laredo to the driver half an hour later and texted the initials for “where you at?”.
The urgency in the tone of messages grew as he did not receive any message from the driver. “Call me, bro,” he texted at 3:18 pm.
He sent the last message around 6.15pm when the authorities had already found Mr Zamorano hiding in the bushes while they pulled bodies.
The driver of high on methamphetamines, two officials later said.
More details emerge about Homer Zamorano’s troubled past
Homero Zamorano, the man charged with driving the abandoned Texas semi-truck in which 53 migrants died, was high on methamphetamine when he was arrested, according to US Representative Henry Cuellar, whose district includes San Antonio.
The Texas Democrat told Reuters he was briefed on the information by Customs and Border Patrol, who he said added that the migrants were likely picked in the truck at a US-based “stash house” before being abandoned in San Antonio on Monday evening.
That would match with accounts from Mr Zamorano’s family, who say he struggled with drug use and resorted to criminality to fund his habit.
“His life is really separate from ours,” Zamarano’s brother-in-law told The Texas Tribune. “I have no idea how he got involved in that. He would get lost for years and would come around occasionally. He basically raised himself.”
Read the full story.
Driver of doomed San Antonio migrant truck was high on meth: Texas congressman
Family members say accused driver used drugs and had past arrests
Four migrants killed in another crash
A jeet carrying a group of migrants crashed into a trailer on Thursday after it escaped a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoint in Encinal, Texas on Thursday.
Four people were killed and three are hospitalised, a crash that came after the deadliest human smuggling incident on record in the United States left 53 migrants dead in an abandoned trailer truck.
The Mexican consulate in the Texan border city of Laredo said two Mexican men, one Guatemalan and another unidentified person died in Thursday’s crash.
The driver was a US citizen and was hospitalised with two other people believed to be from Guatemala.
What comes next in the San Antonio truck smuggling case?
Victims have been found with no identification documents at all and in one case a stolen ID. Remote villages lack phone service to reach family members and determine the whereabouts of missing migrants. Fingerprint data has to be shared and matched by different governments.
More than three days after the discovery of 51 dead migrants in a stifling trailer in San Antonio, few identities of the victims have been made public, illustrating the challenges authorities face in tracing people who cross borders clandestinely.
The AP has the story.
San Antonio migrant deaths lead to slow effort to ID victims
Bodies without identification documents, remote villages without phone service, the need to share fingerprint data across borders and even stolen IDs are complicating efforts to identify the 51 dead migrants found in San Antonio as families from Mexico to Honduras worry their loved ones could be among them
Pictures show families mourning San Antonio victimes
Families, relatives and friends gathered at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas for the special mass for the migrants who were found dead inside a trailer truck.
53 smuggled migrants died from heat-related injuries on Monday. Eleven people, including minors, remain hospitalised with injuries. The group of migrants hailed from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
First responders who discovered the truck said the more than 60 migrants inside were hot to the touch, and that there didn’t appear to be any A/C system working in the trailer. Survivors inside were too weak to exit the trailer on their own two feet.
In Mexico, Yolanda Olivares is comforted by a relative during a mass for her sons Jair, 19, Yovani, 16, and her nephew Misael, 16, who she believes were travelling inside the trailer
Human smuggling by tractor-trailer has increased exponentially, special agent
People are now treated completely as a commodity as human smuggling by tractor-trailer has increased exponentially in the past decade, said. Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge with the investigative arm of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Each body represents an amount of money. It doesn’t represent a family, a father, son, mother or daughter.”
Just months before 53 migrants died inside a sweltering tractor-trailer, another truck driver making a similar journey with 52 migrants was stopped by the police.
Roderick DeWayne Chisley was driving a stolen rig on 17 December 2021. The case later exposed the details of how the process plays out.
ICE has investigated over 1,000 smuggling cases from January to date.
Another official Aristedes Jimenez said the smugglers gather together groups of migrants who have recently crossed the US-Mexico border illegally in US stash houses and then board them on trucks.
“They wait until they have enough people,” Mr Jimenez said. “They want maximum gain.”
Driver of San Antonio truck smuggling migrants was ‘high on meth’
Homero Zamorano, the man charged with driving the abandoned Texas semi-truck in which 53 migrants died, was high on methamphetamine when he was arrested, according to US Representative Henry Cuellar, whose district includes San Antonio.
The Texas Democrat told Reuters he was briefed on the information by Customs and Border Patrol, who he said added that the migrants were likely picked in the truck at a US-based “stash house” before being abandoned in San Antonio on Monday evening.
Read Josh Marcus’ full report
Driver of doomed San Antonio migrant truck was high on meth: Texas congressman
Family members say accused driver used drugs and had past arrests
‘Crime against humanity’: Police officer details graphic scenes from trailer
Police Chief William McManus painted the grim picture, describing what he witnessed at the scene of a tractor-trailer with dozens of migrants inside.
He said they discovered a scene beyond tragic with the floor completely covered in bodies and some bodies lying outside.
“This was a crime against humanity. This was nothing but pure evil, that someone could allow this to happen, to anyone, let alone that many people,” he told CNN.
“The floor of the trailer, it was completely covered in bodies. Completely covered in bodies,” he said. “There were at least 10-plus bodies outside the trailer, because when we arrived, when EMS arrived, we were trying to find people who were still alive. So we had to move bodies out of the trailer onto the ground.”
A police officer from the scene radioed: “We’re going to need someone to process. Everyone on scene, including my DI’s, are tied up with assisting. Got approximately 20-plus victims.”
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