Temecula Crash Survivor Haunted by Screams and Scene of Death

The sounds of last week’s fatal accident in Temecula, echoing in his head, still keep Jose Manuel Contreras Pineda awake at night.

As he lay on the floor of a stolen Chevrolet Suburban, piled atop other illegal immigrants, Contreras and four friends heard the siren of a Border Patrol car wail close behind as the chase began on Interstate 15.

He heard the engine roar as the Suburban sped through the streets of Temecula. He heard screams from the front seat. Then came the hideous shearing impact of metal on metal as the Suburban hit another car at the intersection then overturned.

“It was something ugly,” said Contreras, 22, who is being held as a witness, groping for words during an interview Tuesday at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. “It . . . it was really loud . . . I managed to get out by myself. I looked and everybody was covered with blood.”

Contreras and two others among the dozen illegal immigrants in the fleeing vehicle described for the first time Tuesday the chase and accident outside a Temecula high school. All three were still dazed at being in the center of a major news event that has raised questions about Border Patrol chase policies.

Four high school students and a parent died at the scene, and one of the immigrants in the Suburban died of his injuries over the weekend. A 16-year-old Mexican national who allegedly was driving the Suburban has been charged with murder and a 23-year-old passenger has been charged with smuggling illegal immigrants.

As they recover from minor injuries, the three witnesses in the federal detention center in San Diego said they are trying to recover from the emotional toll of the past week: the hospital, interrogations, nightmares, sadness.

“Imagine how I feel,” Contreras said. “Innocent people died.”

Contreras and Jesus Salazar Gutierrez, 29, are peasants from the same area of Mexico. They say they had crossed the border for the first time in search of agricultural work in Visalia. The third man is a streetwise ex-convict, Alfredo Flores Talonia, who admits to past smuggling but denies a reported claim by the accused driver that he was involved in bringing the others into the country and helped cause the accident by forcing the driver to speed.

“I was just a pollo (illegal immigrant) like everybody else,” said the tattooed Flores, 27, who has not been charged with any crime in the investigation. “I paid like everyone else this time so I wouldn’t have any problems. And it came out worse.”

The Temecula incident had its roots in a gritty Tijuana neighborhood just south of the bordo , the Tijuana river levee that is one of the prime illegal crossing points on the U. S.-Mexico border. Contreras and Salazar arrived there on May 30 after traveling by bus from the state of Guerrero.

They stayed at a run-down little hotel until Monday, they said, when they were approached at the bordo by a smooth-talking smuggler who named a destination and a price: Santa Ana for $250 apiece.

“We were confident, we thought he would take good care of us,” Contreras said.

Around midnight, the man guided them across the border to a motel in San Ysidro, they said. He left them waiting with other men in a room until dawn, when another smuggler ordered them to pile onto the floor of the Suburban.

“They said get down and stay down, there’s lots of migra (Immigration and Naturalization Service agents) around here,” Salazar said.

According to INS officials, the vehicle was being watched by undercover immigration agents. But the immigrants said they were not aware of any problems until they heard the siren and the chase began.

“He was driving crazy,” Contreras said of the driver of the Suburban, whom he could not identify. “Really crazy. Somebody said, ‘They are chasing us!’ And we just kept going faster.”

Somebody yelled that they were going to die, Salazar said. Someone else shouted a warning. And then, after the horror of the impact, they clambered out of the overturned vehicle, trying to understand how they had survived.

“I felt so bad for those who died,” Salazar said. “And we are still scared because we could have died. I still can’t sleep. I keep hearing the sounds.”