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SAN DIEGO –
Three people were seriously injured when a pickup truck with 13 people in the cab and bed overturned while it was being followed by border guards in eastern San Diego County on Tuesday evening, authorities said.
The other 10 occupants of the Chevrolet Silverado suffered fewer serious injuries, said Captain Frank LoCoco of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in San Diego. Paramedics took one person to a hospital and the other 12 to hospitals by ambulance.
A border patrol spokesman in San Diego said agents were “involved in a neglect incident,” but provided few other details.
The Office for Professional Responsibility of Customs and Border Protection, which is responsible for investigating possible misconduct by employees within the agency, responded to the scene, said spokeswoman Gerrelaine Alcordo.
California Highway Patrol officials also responded along with the Cal Fire crews and Border Patrol agents, LoCoco and Alcordo said.
The crash occurred shortly after 6 p.m. on Interstate 8 heading west south of Pine Valley between Buckman Springs Road and the Sunrise Highway, authorities said. The area is located near a border checkpoint.
“Several people were thrown out of the stern and out of the cabin,” LoCoco said. “We also found patients in the cabin.”
A CHP spokesman said on Wednesday that investigators assume that 12 people were sitting unbraked on the back of the truck with the driver in the cabin. Only the driver was buckled up.
“The driver appears to have tried to exit Buckman Springs Road, then abruptly turned left, back into the main lanes. The driver lost control of the Chevrolet and the Chevrolet drove over the main lane of Interstate 8, onto the dirt median where [it] overrun, “CHP’s Travis Garrow said in a statement.
LoCoco said a medical helicopter, four ambulances and five fire engines responded to the scene, which Cal Fire classified as a “mass accident.”
In October, the Border Patrol issued a press release addressing growing concerns about “an increase in dangerous incidents of neglect … from the beach communities of San Diego to East County”. Supervisory agent Tekae Michael said in the press release that agents in the San Diego sector of the Border Patrol had encountered 23 suspected people smuggling incidents from October 1st to October 27th.
Such incidents have had fatal consequences in the past. In August 2017, three people died and one was injured when a GMC envoy connected to a murder suspect sped away from Border Patrol agents and crashed off Interstate 15 at Rancho Bernardo. In November 2018, three people were killed and eight injured when a pickup truck fleeing from border police agents hit a barbed strip, turned onto an embankment, and rolled on I-8 near the boulevard. In February 2019, two men were killed and one woman seriously injured when their vehicle crashed into a tractor-trailer while fleeing from a border guard on streets in Otay Mesa and sped down an embankment.
In March, 14 people were killed in a non-border patrol smuggling incident in Imperial County. In that collision, authorities said the driver of a 25-person SUV was pulled into the path of a large truck at an intersection in Holtville.
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