Migrants’ corpses sprinkled with spice to disguise odour
SAN ANTONIO: Shocking new details have emerged about the Texas truck disaster, including how the migrant victims were allegedly sprinkled with steak seasoning to mask their odour.
Survivors suffering heat stroke and heat exhaustion were found among the corpses of 51 migrants, without water or airconditioning, amid a heatwave.
The death toll was initially reported at 20 people. The new count makes the tragedy one of the deadliest incidents of migrant trafficking in recent years.
A law-enforcement official revealed that many of the estimated 100 people jammed into the semi-trailer in San Antonio appeared to have been covered in spices to cover up the smell during the tragedy, according to the Texas Tribune.
US police investigating the grim discovery in and around the abandoned trailer truck in sweltering heat said the truck was made to look like a properly registered vehicle in an effort to evade detection.
The owner of a local Alamobased trucking company told the Express-News the truck was “cloned” and painted to match one of his own, right down to copying his legal vehicle’s Department of Transportation registration number.
“Our reefer (refrigerated trailer) is sitting right in the yard,” Felipe Betancourt Jr, who owns Betancourt Trucking with his father, said.
“That one in San Antonio is not our trailer.”
The victims have been identified as being from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
Local police have taken three people into custody and have turned the investigation over to the FBI.
A number of survivors from the human-smuggling disaster were unable to speak while hooked up to hospital tubes, a local Catholic leader told the New York Post.
“At this point, we are trying to hold on to any little sign of hope regarding any of them,’’ the Archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, said after visiting six victims.
“I only was with one who was able to speak. She was the youngest … 16 years old. The other ones are sedated,” the Archbishop said.