Our morning ritual includes getting up at 5am to share coffee and watch the local news before Kevin goes to work. This morning the news on KVOA (NBC, Tucson, "Balanced news you can count on") reported of a van roll-over ten miles east of Benson at the exit ramp of Empirita Road. "Twelve to fifteen people have allegedly been ejected" reported Rebecca Taylor, the annoncer.
"That sounds like a van full of illegals" I commented.
KVOA made this news their "Breaking News" all morning, until all the details were in. The facts were gory: 32 people (!) were packed in a ten-passenger van driving west on I-10 near mile marker 292 when the driver lost control of the vehicle and rolled over. One woman was killed. Seven were airlifted to regional hospitals with multiple traumatic injuries. One, possibly two of the passengers, had advanced chicken pox. Four of the passengers will remain in the US to stand witness to the driver. The illegals were from Guatamala and Equador.
The video of the van looked like a burned-out "carcass" of a van standing among mesquite.
Although a USBP van had seen the vehicle on I-10, there was no pursuit. Perhaps the driver panicked when he saw the USBP and sped up, losing control as he exited the interstate.
The exit ramp was closed until around noon today while investigators analysed the accident scene. It's amazing that not more people were killed.
I get angered at illegal immigrants (because they come in undocumented) but it saddens me to hear about these tragic deaths. Granted, these people normally come to the US for a better life, to make more money here than they can in their own countries, and then they end up dead or apprehended for reckless homicide and end up causing their families back home even more grief and even less income.
Ironically, last night I stayed up late watching "Al Otro Lado," a 2004 Mexican movie about illegal immigration and how it affects the loved ones left behind. The movie profiled a Mexican boy whose father disappeared across the Rio Bravo into the US, a Cuban boy who grew up hearing his father floated on a raft to Florida, (only to be told later by his mom that she made that story up; the real dad left her when he found out she was pregnant), and a Morrocan girl whose father left the family to work in Malaga, Spain as a Kebob server, living with a Spanish girlfriend who had no idea he had a family back in Morroco. http://www.thefilmconnection.org/films/924
http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=8128165&nav=menu216_3
And here's a bonus:
http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=7923835
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