Eight found dead in lorry in Texas parking area

Eight people were found dead and 28 injured in a lorry outside a Walmart shop in San Antonio, Texas, in a horrific case of human trafficking.

The group included children, but police said the dead were all men. The lorry driver has been arrested

Twenty of the injured were severely hurt and were being treated at local hospitals.

Police chief William McManus said the bodies were found after one of the people left the truck and asked a Walmart employee for water yesterday morning. The staff member called police.

The shop’s surveillance video showed that other vehicles had arrived and picked up people from the lorry.

“We’re looking at a human trafficking crime,” Mr McManus said. The department of homeland security was involved in the investigation of the “horrific tragedy”, he said, and that the immigration and Customs departments had been notified.

Fire department chief Charles Hood said the air conditioner in the trailer was not working. “We started extricating patients from the back of a semi-truck,” he said. “We had another 20 patients that were either in extremely critical condition or very serious condition.”

San Antonio is a few hours’ drive from the border with Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state. Weather in the area has been hot and dry. Mr McManus said the discovery was “not an isolated incident. This happens quite frequently under cover of night”.

Illegal migration over the US border with Mexico is an everyday fact. Most of the migrants are from Mexico and Central America seeking better-paid work in the US.

There have been many cases of migrants, often scores at a time, stranded and killed in northern Mexico when the lorry in which they were being driven was abandoned in the heat.

In their haste to evade authorities, smugglers often leave passengers without air conditioning or fresh air.