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Eight people found dead in trailer outside San Antonio Walmart Eight dead in trailer outside San Antonio Walmart 'were very hot to touch'
(about 2 hours later)
Eight people have been found dead in a tractor-trailer outside a Walmart in Texas in what police are calling a human trafficking case. Eight people were found dead in a tractor-trailer loaded outside a Walmart store in the stifling summer heat of Texas, in what police are calling a horrific human trafficking case. The driver was arrested.
Several other people, possibly dozens, were found in the truck, which didn’t have a working air conditioning system despite blistering temperatures that topped 100 degrees fahrenheit, and they were taken to hospitals, firefighters said. Authorities said the driver had been held, but they didn’t release the driver’s identity. Twenty other people in extremely critical or serious condition and eight more with lesser injuries including heat stroke and dehydration were found inside the truck, which did not have a working air conditioning system despite blistering temperatures that topped 100F (37C), authorities said.
San Antonio police said a Walmart employee was approached in a parking lot by a person from the truck who was asking for water late on Saturday night or early on Sunday morning. Police said the employee gave the person the water and then called the authorities. When they arrived they found the eight people dead in the back of the trailer. Store surveillance video showed vehicles had arrived and picked up other people from the tractor-trailer, police said.
Police say they checked surveillance video footage, which showed vehicles had arrived and picked up other people from the tractor-trailer. They said they were “looking at a human trafficking crime”. All the survivors were taken to several hospitals.
Police say the US Department of Homeland Security is involved in the investigation into what happened. “They were very hot to the touch,” said San Antonio fire chief Charles Hood, briefing journalists at the scene in video that authorities posted on social media. “So these people were in this trailer without any signs of any type of water. It was a mass casualty situation for us.
The National Weather Service’s local office said the temperature in San Antonio hit 101 degrees just before 5pm on Saturday and didn’t dip below 90 degrees until after 10pm. “We are very fortunate that there weren’t 38 people who were locked inside of this vehicle dead.”
Late on Saturday night or early on Sunday morning, police said, a person from the truck approached a Walmart employee in a parking lot and asked for water. The employee gave the person the water and then called police, and when officers arrived they found the eight people dead in the back of the trailer and 30 survivors inside, police chief William McManus said.
The driver had been held, McManus said. He did not release the driver’s identity.
“We’re looking at a human trafficking crime this evening,” McManus said, adding that many of those inside the truck appeared to be adults in their 20s and 30s but there were also apparently two school-age children. He called the case “a horrific tragedy”.
The US Department of Homeland Security was involved in the investigation, he said.
The National Weather Service’s local office said the temperature in San Antonio hit 101F just before 5pm on Saturday and didn’t dip below 90F (32C) until after 10 pm.
Other cases of human trafficking in the US have led to more deaths. In May 2003, 19 immigrants being transported from south Texas to Houston died inside a sweltering tractor-trailer.
Prosecutors said the driver in the 2003 case heard the immigrants begging and screaming for their lives as they were succumbing to the stifling heat inside his truck but refused to free them. The driver was re-sentenced in 2011 to nearly 34 years in prison, after a federal appeals court overturned the multiple life sentences he had received.