San Antonio: Eight found dead in truck at Walmart car park

[nitpicker]

Source: BBC

Eight people have been found dead inside a trailer truck parked outside a Walmart store in San Antonio, in the US state of Texas, police officials say. Twenty others were in critical or serious condition, some believed to be suffering heatstroke or dehydration, and taken to hospital.

Police did not say where the vehicle came from, but confirmed that the driver was in custody. They are investigating a possible people-smuggling offence.
(snip)

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said in a press briefing that the bodies were discovered after a call from a Walmart employee, who had been approached by someone from the truck asking for water. Video footage from the store showed a number of vehicles arriving to pick up some of the survivors, he added. Several others may have managed to escape on foot into the woods nearby.

Local fire chief Charles Hood said they had arrived at the scene just after midnight to find eight people dead in the back of the trailer truck, which had no functioning air conditioning and no signs of water inside.

The survivors had heart rates of over 130 beats per minute and were very hot to touch. In addition to 20 in critical condition, eight others of less severity were taken to hospital.
(snip)


Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40696306

[Stuart G]

1. Very Sad

[nikibatts]

2. With the current ban in place on immigration both temp and permanent, more of this will be happening

In Texas I would suspect that many farmers and other labor needy businesses will be trying to smuggle people in.

[Scarsdale]

3. Meanwhile tRump

is importing foreign workers for his venues, only THEY get temporary permits. Farmers in Wisconsin and other places need their help much more than golf courses and hotels.

[IronLionZion]

6. He already got their votes in Wisconsin

and told them immigrants were stealing their jobs.

Some red states are reviewing plans to use prison labor for the farms. America is becoming great again like before the civil war.

[DK504]

11. As food rots in the fields these rubes will wonder

why they don't have any food in their Wally World. Idiots.

[Igel]

10. He's not the only one.

There are businesses in California with one purpose: They contract out labor and apply for temporary work visas for people from Central America. We don't hear about them because there's no point in hearing about them. No drama, no advocacy, no outrage, not much political to be said about them. (Including criticizing them.)

In other word, they do (and have done for many, many years) what Trump's doing. They're more expensive than illegal immigrant labor but that's because they're above board with wages, taxes, living conditions.

(And still, their numbers are limited. Nobody wants a guest-worker program of any size, including farm-worker advocates. If we had 500,000 legal, temp farm workers we'd have a problem with the undocumented people who immigrate.)

[Honeycombe8]

9. This is a long-established method of smuggling the immigrants in.

Finding them dead in locked vans and trucks has been going on for years. They pay someone to bring them in this way. It's an established, shady and illegal business, obviously, and they don't care about the people. I remember one instance where I think everyone in the trailer was dead.

[LeftInTX]

12. Yes it is

[Not Ruth]

4. Meanwhile the survivors will be deported and the farmers will have to harvest the crops without them

[Not Ruth]

5. Why not drive the truck to a sanctuary city and let everyone out?

Parking a truck of immigrants in Walmart seems like a really bad idea, was the mayor's driveway full?

[lunatica]

7. Once they give their money to the smugglers their lives are forfeit.

This kind of smuggling is much more common than is known by Americans. But usually these trucks and vans are found in the middle of the desert, abandoned by the smugglers because they have all the money. It's a vicious fact.

[BigmanPigman]

8. I live in San Diego by the border and this is fairly common.

[LeftyMom]

14. Or their families are shaken down for a ransom

[LeftInTX]

13. Update:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/8-found-dead-in-trailer-11308288.php?ipid=brkbar

Vigil planned at San Fernando Cathedral this evening.