7 Dead After SUV Strikes Pedestrians Near Migrant Shelter In Texas Border City

7 Dead After SUV Strikes Pedestrians Near Migrant Shelter In Texas Border City

Jennie Taer on May 7, 2023

Seven people were killed and 10 others were injured on Sunday after an SUV plowed into a group of pedestrians near a migrant shelter in South Texas.

The incident occurred at a bus stop across the street from an overnight migrant shelter in Brownsville, Texas, which is a town located at the epicenter of the border crisis, according to The Associated Press. The victims were mostly Venezuelan men, according to the shelter’s director, Victor Maldonado.

Brownsville, which is located on the most eastern point of the American land border with Mexico, recently issued a disaster declaration after 15,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, crossed into the U.S. in a single week, according to the New York Post.

Brownsville Police Lt. Martin Sandoval said, “Now, we don’t know the actual cause of the accident. Like I said, it could be three different things. One, he could be intoxicated. Two, it could be just accidental. Or three, it could be intentional,” according to local news outlet ValleyCentral.com. Sandoval said that 10 victims were also transported to the hospital.

“What we see in the video [from the shelter’s surveillance cameras] is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a 100 feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” Maldonado said, according to the AP.

“I’ve had a couple of people come by the gate and tell the security guard that the reason this happened was because of us,” Maldonado added.

Maldonado said that the shelter has been housing 250 to 380 migrants per day, and that  “some of them were on the way to the bus station, because they were on their way to their destination,” according to the AP.