Eight people were killed and 10 others injured on Sunday after a sports utility vehicle (SUV) plowed into a crowd outside a shelter serving migrants and homeless people in Brownsville, Texas, and investigators believe it might have been intentional, authorities said.
The vehicle careened into the crowd of people who were sitting on the curb at a bus stop near the Ozanam Center at about 8.30am, said the Brownsville Police Department, which is near Texas’ border with Mexico.
The incident came four days before the scheduled expiration of Title 42, the COVID-19 era policy that allows border patrol agents to swiftly expel migrants at the US’ southern border.
Photo: AP
Shelter director Victor Maldonado said that upon reviewing the shelter’s surveillance footage, he saw an SUV run a light and plow into the crowd of people who were at the bus stop.
The majority of those who were injured or killed were Venezuelan men.
“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet [30.5m] away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” Maldonado said.
Police lieutenant Martin Sandoval told the Valley Central news outlet that seven people died at the scene, and several others were rushed to nearby hospitals. The toll was updated to eight after another person died on Sunday night.
Video footage posted online showed crowds of people at the scene with clothes and other personal items strewn all over the road. Several people appeared to be tending to an individual who was lying on a grassy area.
Sandoval said the driver was arrested and booked on a count of reckless driving.
More charges are likely to be filed in what officers suspect might have been an intentional act, he added.
“It can be three factors,” Sandoval said. “It could be intoxication; it could be an accident; or it could be intentional. In order for us to find out exactly what happened, we have to eliminate the other two.”
The driver was transported to a nearby hospital for injuries he sustained after the vehicle rolled over, he said, adding that no passengers were with him.
“He’s being very uncooperative at the hospital, but he will be transported to our city jail as soon as he gets released,” Sandoval said.
The detained driver had given officers several different names, he added.
“Then we’ll fingerprint him and [take a] mug shot, and then we can find his true identity,” Sandoval said.
Police have also obtained a blood sample from the driver and have submitted it to be tested for possible intoxicants.
The Ozanam Center is the only overnight shelter in Brownsville and manages the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody. It also offers free transportation for migrants.
“In the last two months, we’ve been getting 250 to 380 a day,” Maldonado said, adding that even though the shelter can hold up to 250 migrants, many who arrive also leave on the same day.
“Some of them were on the way to the bus station, because they were on their way to their destination,” he said.
Two days earlier, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days before the end of asylum restrictions implemented through Title 42 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas, particularly in and around the border community of Brownsville, has occurred over the past two weeks for reasons that Mayorkas said were unclear.
On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in border patrol custody in Texas’s Rio Grande valley were Venezuelan.
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