California crash on Tuesday near the border with Mexico in Southern California saw at least 13 people dead.
According to the report by DailyNews, Police officers responding to the California crash in Holstville just after 6 a.m. found a grisly and tragic scene, with 12 dead bodies and multiple victims with serious injuries outside and inside the SUV, according to police. A 13th person was pronounced dead upon arrival at a hospital.
The cause of the wreck remains under investigation, though officials believe that the gravel-hauling big rig slammed into a Ford Expedition that was travelling with at least 25 people in Imperial County, about 15 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The impact was so strong that multiple passengers were ejected from the overloaded SUV and died after hitting the pavement, California Highway Patrol Chief Omar Watson said at a news conference.
The driver and an unknown number of passengers were found dead inside the Expedition, which is only supposed to seat up to eight people.
“It’s a very sad situation,” Watson told reporters.
“Obviously, that vehicle is not meant for that many people,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that that many people were put into that vehicle because there’s not enough safety constraints to safely keep those people in that vehicle.”
The ages of those who died in the California crash, ranged from 20 to 55 and the youngest injured victim is 16 years old, authorities said.
Officials at El Centro Regional Medical Center, which received many of the patients, initially reported that 15 people had died in the California crash. The death toll was later corrected by state officials.
Among the survivors, four were flown to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs and at least five others were being treated at El Centro and other hospitals. One of those patients was the truck driver, who appeared to be alone in the vehicle. Their injuries ranged from fractures to life-threatening head trauma, hospital officials said.
The California crash happened around in an agricultural area near State Route 115. The maroon Expedition was apparently heading westbound when it traveled “directly in the path of the big rig” on a northbound lane, Watson said.
“At this point it’s unknown whether or not the Expedition stopped at the stop sign, but it did enter the intersection in front of the big rig,” he said. “Subsequently the big rig collided with the left side of the Ford Expedition.”
The rate of speed for each vehicle was also unknown, but the investigation was still in its early stages, authorities said.
Officials from the Mexican consulate and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection were assisting with the investigation as some of the victims appeared to have ties to Mexico or need help with translation, authorities said. A Border Patrol official told The Associated Press that the SUV occupants may have been farm workers.
“It was an unusual number of people in an SUV, but we don’t know who they were,” said Macario Mora, a spokesman for the agency.
Dr. Adolphe Edward, El Centro’s chief executive officer, stressed that his hospital does not know or ask questions about its patients’ immigration status.
“We don’t use the term ‘undocumented’ in the hospital,” he said at a news conference. “To us, these folks that came to us are patients.”
Edward also declined to confirm whether any children were seriously hurt or killed in the crash.
“The patients are, of course, going through a little bit of a difficult time, as you can imagine,” he said. “This was a major accident and we are taking care of them in the emergency room department.”