Man charged after bodies found

U.S. authorities on Thursday charged a man with human smuggling of Indian nationals from Canada, the day after four people including a baby were found frozen to death in Manitoba close to the border.

The U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota said 47-yearold Steve Shand had been arrested just south of the border on Wednesday while driving two undocumented Indian citizens.

U.S. border patrol agents soon came across five more Indians travelling on foot, one of whom was carrying a backpack belonging to a family of four who had become separated from the group as they all tried to cross the border.

They alerted Canadian police who found the victims — a man, a woman, a teenage boy and a baby — about 12 metres from the frontier with Minnesota. First indications are that they died from exposure to the cold.

“These victims faced not only the cold weather, but also endless fields, large snowdrifts and complete darkness,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner Jane MacLatchy told a news conference in Winnipeg.

Wind chill had driven down the temperature to minus 35 C, she said.

“It is an absolute and heartbreaking tragedy,” MacLatchy said.

A search for possible survivors or additional victims continued Wednesday night and officers were still patrolling the area Thursday, RCMP said. No one else was found.

The U.S. attorney's office said in a statement that the four victims had tentatively been identified as the missing Indian family.

The five Indian nationals explained they had walked across the border and estimated they had been walking around for over 11 hours.

Emerson-Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson said instances of people crossing the border outside the checkpoint have dropped significantly in recent years. He was surprised to learn of the four deaths.

“If you look at the political climate on both sides of the border, it's just mind-boggling to me that anyone had that sense of desperation to try and cross in extreme conditions.”

It has been extremely cold and windy in recent days, Carlson said. The area where the bodies were found is far enough away that people would not see lights from the town, he said, and it would be easy to get disoriented.