Eight individuals have now lost their lives after an SUV struck a group of people waiting for a bus outside a migrant shelter in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday. As they got ready to detain the driver who was taken to the hospital, police stated at least 10 other people had been hurt.
At the unidentified city bus stop, where there was no bench, several of the victims were seated on the curb around 8:30 a.m. when the vehicle struck them, according to CCTV footage from the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center. Martin Sandoval, a Brownsville police investigator, said authorities were uncertain as to whether the crash was deliberate when he reported the most recent death Sunday night.
The SUV reportedly raced up the curb, flipped, and continued going for about 60 meters, according to shelter director Victor Maldonado. According to Maldonado, other pedestrians who were nine meters away from the main group were also struck. According to him, witnesses stopped the driver as he attempted to flee and kept him until the police arrived.
After watching the security footage from the shelter, Maldonado stated, “This SUV, a Range Rover, just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop and just ran the light that was about 100 feet (30 meters) away.”
According to Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the victims were waiting for the bus to take them back to downtown Brownsville after spending the night at the overnight shelter.
Maldonado claimed that most of the fatalities were males from Venezuela.
According to authorities, there has been an increase in Venezuelan migrants in Brownsville over the past two weeks for unknown reasons. Four thousand of the approximately 6,000 migrants held by Border Patrol in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley on Thursday were Venezuelan.
According to Sandoval, the driver was brought to the hospital after the automobile overturned and he was hurt. According to Sandoval, the car had no occupants and authorities were unsure of the driver’s name or age at the time.
There are three possibilities for the crash, according to Sandoval: “It may be intoxicated; it might be an accident; or it could be purposeful. We need to rule out the other two before we can determine exactly what happened.
He is acting very uncooperatively at the hospital, but Sandoval promised that as soon as he is freed, he will be taken to the city jail. We’ll take his fingerprints and mug shot after that, and only then will we be able to determine who he really is. Police collected a blood sample and submitted it to a lab run by the Texas Department of Public Safety to be tested for alcohol contamination.
Brownsville commissioners held a special meeting on Thursday to extend the emergency designation indefinitely due to the recent spike in migrant numbers.
Pedro Cardenas, a city commissioner, stated on Sunday following the collision, “We don’t want them wandering around outside.” In order to prevent them from leaving to look for somewhere else, we are working to ensure that they are as comfortable as possible.
Brownsville has historically been a focal point for migration across the U.S.-Mexico border, and it has emerged as a prominent area of attention for the expiration of Title 42 border limitations from the epidemic era next week. The Ozanam shelter, the sole overnight refuge in the area, coordinates the release of several migrants held in federal detention.
Maldonado claimed that prior to the disaster, the center had not received any threats but did so afterwards.
A few people have come by the gate and informed the security guard that we are to blame for what transpired, Maldonado added.
In the previous few days, Cardenas estimated that 2,500 migrants per day had crossed the river into Brownsville. The Border Patrol, he claimed, is aware that the city can accommodate 1,000 people at both its processing facility located close to the border crossing point and the downtown building where volunteers and city staff assist migrants in obtaining bus or airplane tickets to their final destinations. Cardenas stated that the city is thinking about increasing its services to meet demand in the next days.
Despite the fact that 80% of those freed from federal detention leave the same day, a backlog has developed over the past several days, according to the city’s emergency management chief.
The majority of those crossing the border do not want to remain in Brownsville, but there are not enough buses for them to purchase a ticket to go, according to Cardenas. Some people are awaiting family members.
250 people can stay at the Ozanam shelter, but many depart the same day. A spike of border crossings over the past few weeks caused the city to declare an emergency as municipal, state, and federal resources coordinated law enforcement and humanitarian aid.
We’ve been receiving 250 to 380 a day over the past two months, according to Maldonado.
During the week, the shelter provides transportation for the migrants, although they also use the city’s public transportation.
In a statement released on Sunday afternoon, Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said: “I hope that today serves as a wake-up call, and that state officials will begin investing in a humanitarian response that might have helped the people who were impacted by this morning’s tragedy.”
Vicente Gonzalez, a U.S. Representative, stated on Sunday that local authorities and the federal government are talking about the crash.
We are all incredibly saddened and horrified by the tragedy that has occurred in our community, he said.
