13 of 25 people in SUV die in road crash
HOLTVILLE, Calif. — Thirteen people were killed Tuesday when an SUV carrying 25 people collided with a tractor-trailer truck on a Southern California highway near the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities said.
Twelve people were found dead when first responders reached the highway. Another person died at a hospital, California Highway Patrol Chief Omar Watson said.
Authorities do not yet know if the driver of the 1997 Ford Expedition, who died in the crash, had stopped at a stop sign before crossing into the path of the big rig around 6:15 a.m., Watson said. The big rig hit the left side of the SUV, which appeared to have been pushed off the road about 100 miles east of San Diego.
Watson described a grisly scene outside Holtville, a rural town about 11 miles north of the border with farms that grow vegetables and alfalfa for cattle feed. Officers arrived to find that some people had been ejected from the SUV onto the ground. Some of the passengers had pulled themselves from the wreckage, and others who were injured were wandering around.
A Ford Expedition typically seats eight people legally. The California Highway Patrol did not immediately know why so many occupants had been crammed into the SUV. The driver was a 22-year-old man from Mexicali, a city just over the Mexico border.
The driver of the big rig, a 69-year-old man from El Centro, Calif., was hospitalized with moderate injuries.