Eight dead after human smuggling suspect crashes into SUV, authorities say

Eight people were killed Wednesday morning in southwest Texas when a driver suspected of human smuggling tried to elude law enforcement officers and crashed head-on into an SUV, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

The crash occurred just after 6:30 a.m. on US-57 near Batesville, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio, the department said in a statement. The driver of a Honda Civic, carrying five passengers and being pursued by a Zavala County Sheriff’s Office vehicle, “passed a truck-tractor-trailer in a no-passing zone” and crashed the car into the SUV, causing both vehicles to collide came. catch fire, it said.

The driver, a 21-year-old from Houston, was killed, as were the five passengers, some of whom were from Honduras, the department said. The driver and passenger of the SUV, both from Georgia, were also killed, authorities said, who withheld the names of the dead pending notification of their families.

A spokeswoman for the Zavala County Sheriff’s Office declined to provide further information about the crash Wednesday, noting that the Texas Department of Public Safety had taken over the investigation.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, Lt. Christopher Olivarez, said he did not know how fast the sheriff’s office vehicle or the Honda was traveling at the time of the crash, and that the investigation was continuing.

“We are yet to identify the deceased,” he said.

There have been a number of fatal accidents involving migrants near the Mexican border in recent years.

In March 2021, 13 migrants were killed when an SUV carrying more than 20 people collided with a tractor-trailer on the outskirts of Holtville, California, near the border with Mexico. Less than two weeks later, eight migrants were killed in southwest Texas when a pickup truck they were riding in crashed head-on into another pickup truck during a police chase.