Latinos in U.S. News: Four Undocumented Immigrants Dead and Three Injured After Car Crashes in the Mojave Desert

Four undocumented immigrants lost their lives and three other were injured on Sunday in a car accident on Highway 40 on the Mojave Desert, local media reported.

The incident happened on Sunday, March 30 at around 16:30, when a group of eight immigrants were being transported from Houston to Los Angeles in a Black 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe, according to Los Angeles Times.

According to the same source, California Highway Patrol told the media that it answered a 911 emergency call, after the vehicle in which the immigrants traveled flipped over on the highway about 450km west of Needles.

San Bernardino County's forensic office revealed that four people died, aged between 18 and 25, who were thrown out of the car, while three other passengers were sent to hospitals in Las Vegas.

The driver of the vehicle, an alleged "coyote", escape and authorities are trying to find him.

"The driver was falling asleep"

Johana Escobar, a 27-year-old Guatemalan national who managed to survive Sunday's accident told La Opinión that the vehicle's driver was tired after 15 hours of driving, and they asked him to stop to rest.

"I've done this many times, in about two hours we'll be in Los Angeles," the man told the immigrants.

On his part, José Vázquez, a resident of LA who was traveling on Highway 40 on Sunday, told La Opinión that the truck in which the immigrants traveled overtook a bus before flipping over.

"We got down to help, and we saw it was very difficult, I started carrying the bodies of people left on the highway so they wouldn't be run over by other cars; some of them had their skulls crushed," said Vázquez.

Johana told the newspaper that she left Guatemala on March 13 to meet her husband in the US, she crossed Mexico in two weeks and stayed in a Houston hotel for 3 days before the coyote picked her up along with seven other immigrants.

The woman said that in every place she reached in her journey she met a different person to deal with. The last woman she dealt with in Houston, the person who sent the truck towards Los Angeles, called her on Monday to threaten her and warn her not to say anything because she knew where to find her.