At least 55 die in migrant truck crash in Mexico

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ (Mexico) • The Guatemalan teenager had been packed with more than 150 fellow migrants for hours, he said, jammed in rows of six, some sitting, some standing, some choking on the southern Mexico heat.

Then the speeding tractor-trailer started to fishtail uncontrollably, said Mr Esvin Chipel Tzoy.

Within seconds, the vehicle flipped and crashed, the deadliest single-day disaster in many years to befall Central American migrants who attempt the perilous route through Mexico to the United States.

Mexico officials said at least 55 people had been killed and 106 hospitalised in Thursday's crash. They attributed the disaster to excessive speed and said the driver, who may have passed undetected through immigration checkpoints, escaped after the crash.

Interviews with survivors, witnesses and one of the medics depicted a scene of mangled metal, vomit, blood and dust coating the bodies of migrants piled atop one another on the highway and what remained of the tractor-trailer.

Mr Chipel said the trailer began to lurch from side to side before he heard a loud boom, as if the brakes had failed, followed by the screech of metal as the trailer tipped. Then came screams from fellow passengers which included children.

Not far behind, 17-year-old Melody Ramirez Moreno was perched behind her husband on a motorcycle when they saw the tractor-trailer sway precariously. Her husband hit the brakes, but the bike's front wheel twisted, she said, as her foot was trapped and mangled in the back wheel.

"The only thing I could hear were the screams, the laments, the cries of the people on the truck," she said. "Everything happened in the blink of an eye."

The trailer overturned, slammed into a pedestrian bridge, split apart and scattered a mass of bodies across the highway.

Mr Chipel too was thrown from the vehicle. "I couldn't breathe," he said, recalling how his nostrils filled with blood and dust. "I thought I was dying."

The injured migrants, mostly from Guatemala like Mr Chipel, were being treated at hospitals around Tuxtla Gutierrez, the Chiapas state capital, on Friday.

Mr Chipel said he had left Guatemala last Sunday and had been trying to get to the US in hopes of getting work to support his ageing parents, who disapproved of his decision to leave.

"In Guatemala, you can't get ahead," he said. "I wanted to go for that American dream."

Mr Luis Eduardo Hernandez Trejo, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said he could immediately tell that many victims were dead.

Realising the severity of the crash, Mr Hernandez said he called for backup and sought to identify the wounded who needed urgent help.

"It was a tragic incident," he said. "The people were trying to get to the US for a better life."

Heavily armed Mexico National Guard troops surrounded the crash site on Friday, the twisted debris from the upturned truck and the bodies of victims long removed. The only signs of the tragedy were red streaks of dried blood on the road and a makeshift memorial of candles and fruit.

Mr Giovanni Lepri, representative of the United Nations refugee agency in Mexico, said it was "horrifying to think 54 people or more had to unfortunately die to give this much visibility to something that is happening every day".

As governments ramp up deterrence efforts, migrants have sought increasingly dangerous ways to evade the authorities, paying smugglers steep prices to be crammed into trucks and trailers.

The crash caused the worst-known single-day death toll for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

NYTIMES