Federal agents are investigating the deaths of six people believed to be immigrants found Sunday inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the Mexico border in Laredo, Texas, as a potential human smuggling case. A seventh death was also discovered and is believed to be connected.
A Union Pacific employee found the bodies during a routine cargo check. The seventh body was located by police near railroad tracks in Bexar County, about 150 miles away. An autopsy on one victim, a 29-year-old Mexican woman, indicated she died of hyperthermia or heat stroke. The medical examiner estimates it took up to eight hours for the victims to die. Boxcars were described as “airtight” with potential temperatures reaching 150 degrees. Someone inside had sent a text message to a relative before dying. Homeland Security calls this a potential human smuggling event.