A relative in another state called San Antonio police on a Saturday after getting a message from someone riding a freight train. He said he was in a boxcar and feeling ill because “it was getting very, very hot.” By Monday he was dead beside the tracks, one of seven people who died in what officials believe was a smuggling run.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said police were sent “several miles up the road” from where the man was finally found. After officers learned of the bodies in Laredo, about 160 miles southwest, they went back and patrolled the tracks until they found him. The sheriff identified him only as male. Salazar said the man may have fallen from the train or been thrown out.
“At this point, the prevailing theory is that he’s a resident of Mexico that was among the group that was being smuggled into the country in one of these shipping containers,” Salazar told a news conference Monday.
Discovery in Laredo
A Union Pacific employee reported “multiple casualties” in a trailer box car around 3 p.m. Sunday, Laredo police said. The Webb County chief medical examiner confirmed five males and one female were recovered. One appears to be a teenage boy and has not been identified.
The medical examiner’s office believes the Laredo group came from Mexico and Honduras. Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry later confirmed that three of the dead are Mexican. It offered condolences and said the government would stay in touch with families and help return the bodies.
Two victims were identified Monday: a 29-year-old woman from Mexico and a 24-year-old man from Honduras. An initial examination points to hyperthermia as the woman’s cause of death, the office said, noting that temperatures reached as high as 105 degrees Sunday. “While formal examinations for the remaining five individuals are still pending, it is highly probable that hyperthermia was the cause of death for the entire group,” it said. All of the victims’ cellphones have been handed over in case they help with identification, and local authorities are working with consulates to reach families.
Where the train started
The train’s origin was not immediately released. Laredo police investigator Jose Baeza said that question was “at the crux of the ongoing fluid investigation,” and noted that the rail yard stretches for miles. “Imagine a loading dock at a seaport, but for trains,” he said. “This is where they load and unload a lot of rail cars.”
A Union Pacific spokesperson said the company is “saddened by this incident” and is “working closely with law enforcement to investigate.”
Laredo sits on the Mexican border and has one of the largest ports of entry in Texas. As of 2024, Port Laredo handled 62% of the state’s land port trade, valued at nearly $340 billion, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
