Truck Was Airless Tomb For Migrants

Locked inside the back of a sweltering, airless semitrailer, a large group of illegal immigrants tried desperately to save themselves.

One dialed 911 on a cell phone and pleaded for help in Spanish.

Police Chief Sam Granato said the dispatcher in Kingsville, Texas, passed the call to someone who spoke Spanish, but the call was cut off and the number couldn't be traced.

After listening to a digital recording, Granato said police were able to hear the man saying that people were suffocating.

"He kept saying that over and over again," said Granato, adding that the man also said "help me" and "there's nine down."

Minutes later, one hung a bandanna out of a hole in the trailer's back door as it sped north on U.S. Highway 77. Another motorist saw the signal, but his mobile phone wasn't working, so he couldn't call authorities in time.

When the trailer's door was opened in Victoria, Texas, early Wednesday, 17 people in the illicit cargo had lost their lives. Another died several hours later.

It was the deadliest immigrant-smuggling attempt in the United States in more than 15 years. In 1987, the Border Patrol found 18 Mexican immigrants dead in a boxcar left on a rail siding in the West Texas town of Sierra Blanca.

Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at the Homeland Security Department, said the federal agency would help catch those involved.

Authorities said the trailer's owner was arrested Wednesday in the Houston area, about 115 miles northeast of Victoria. Tyrone Williams of Schenectady, N.Y., was charged with transporting and harboring aliens and conspiracy to transport and harbor aliens, Victoria County District Attorney Dexter Eaves confirmed Thursday on NBC.

Williams' wife, Karen, told the Houston Chronicle in a story for its online edition that her husband normally hauls watermelons from the border to the Northeast. She said he told her the trailer was hijacked and that he dropped the trailer "for his own safety and ran."

Williams was to appear in court Thursday. Eaves told the CBS News Early Show that the maximum penalty for causing a death through smuggling is life imprisonment.

" If there's evidence that someone intended to cause that death, they could be subjected to the federal death penalty," Eaves said.

Michael Shelby, U.S. attorney in Houston, said authorities were looking for two others in connection with the case.

"The people that are driving the trucks, they're important and I want to make sure they pay, but what I want is the people at the top that are soliciting and going out and getting these poor folks and stuffing them in these just horrible, horrible type things and killing people," he said.

Shelby said more than 100 people had been packed into the trailer. The "vast majority" of the immigrants are from Mexico, though there are also people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Nunez said.

The smugglers apparently unhitched the trailer at the Victoria truck stop, about 175 miles from the Mexican border, and drove off.

The trailer had arrived at the truck stop about an hour before authorities got a call about an unspecified disturbance there around 2 a.m., Victoria County Sheriff Michael Ratcliff said.

Some of the 39 survivors in U.S. custody told consular officials sent to interview them that smugglers had loaded them aboard the trailer Tuesday in Harlingen, Texas.

While the trailer was being pulled — apparently toward Houston — the refrigerated truck's air conditioning worked well. But when the driver unhooked his cab and abandoned the trailer, the cramped container quickly became an airless tomb.

Insulation around several small holes in the back door was scraped away, suggesting the immigrants from Mexico and Central America had tried to claw their way to more air.

"In desperation, the people said they broke out the truck's taillights, to try and attract someone's attention and perhaps get some air," said Marco Nunez, press officer for Eduardo Ibarrola, Mexico's consul in Houston. Ibarrola interviewed some of the survivors.

Some of the victims were said to have torn off their clothes because of the unbearable heat.

Thirteen bodies were found inside the trailer Wednesday morning and four others were on the ground just outside. A boy, 5 or 6 years old, was among the dead.

Ratcliff said four of the victims were hospitalized in Victoria with heat-related injuries, while another 40 were staying at a temporary shelter in the city. He said authorities bought a cake for a 15-year-old girl who was rescued on her birthday.