Seven people were killed and up to six were injured Sunday after they were struck by a vehicle while waiting at a city bus stop outside of a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, police said.
Brownsville police investigator Martin Sandoval said the crash happened about 8:30 a.m.
Shelter director Victor Maldonado of the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center said he reviewed the shelter’s surveillance video on Sunday morning after receiving a call about the crash.
The city bus stop is across the street from the shelter and is not marked. There was no bench, and people waiting there were sitting along the curb, Maldonado said. He said most of the victims were Venezuelan men.
“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” Maldonado said.
The Ozanam shelter is the only overnight shelter in the city of Brownsville and manages the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody.
“In the last two months, we’ve been getting 250 to 380 a day,” Maldonado said. The shelter can hold 250, but many who arrive leave the same day. In the last several weeks, an uptick in border crossings prompted the city to declare an emergency as local, state and federal resources coordinated the enforcement and humanitarian response.
While the shelter offers migrants transportation during the week, they are also free to use the city’s public transportation.
“Some of them were on the way to the bus station, because they were on their way to their destination,” the director said.