High-Speed Chase Between Border Patrol and Suspected Human Smugglers Ends in Fatal Crash
Suspected human smugglers led Border Patrol agents in Texas on a high-speed chase on Thursday before crashing into a tractor-trailer, killing four people and injuring three others, according to reports.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said a vehicle believed to be carrying migrants lost control and crashed into the back of a stationary 18-wheeler while trying to exit I-35 in Encinal, KHOU 11 reported.
The driver of the speeding vehicle was killed in the crash, the New York Post reported. The injured were flown by helicopter to local hospitals, according to the report.
Encinal is home to the Border Patrol checkpoint that admitted a truck carrying 64 migrants earlier this week. Police discovered 48 dead migrants in the truck after it was abandoned in a remote area in San Antonio on a 102 degree day. Fifty-three of the migrants who were in the trailer have died in total.
The crash comes weeks after an official in another border community told a Congressional committee that his area has seen such a rise in high-speed chases that the local school campus is “now militarized with boulders that surround the campus to prevent cars from high speed car chases from actually entering campus and injuring children.”
Kinney County attorney Brent Smith told the House Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth that before the current border crisis began, the county saw maybe two or three high speed police chases per year. The weekend before his testimony earlier this month, the county saw ten high speed chases, he said.
He noted that funds that the county had hoped to use to build a splash pad park had to be reappropriated for emergency shelters for migrants and to secure the schools.
