‘Horrific scene’: bodies found in shipping container at Texas rail yard
Bodies of five men and one woman were found in a sweltering container in southern Texas in a suspected smuggling event
Federal agents are investigating the deaths of six people thought to be immigrants found inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the border with Mexico in Laredo, Texas, on Sunday as a “potential human smuggling event”.
A Union Pacific employee found the bodies of six people inside a shipping container Sunday afternoon, said Jose Baeza, the Laredo Police Department public information officer.
Dr Corinne Stern, the Webb County medical examiner, is conducting autopsies and completed one for a 29-year-old Mexican woman who died of hyperthermia, or heatstroke.
“I’ve ruled that an accidental death,” she said, adding that she believes the others also died from heatstroke but could not rule on their cause of death until she completes their autopsies.
Stern estimates it took up to eight hours for the people to succumb to illness.
Stern found identification cards and mobile phones that indicate the deceased may be from Mexico and Honduras, but fingerprints were taken and shared with US Border Patrol to help confirm their identities and nationalities through the Missing Alien Programme.