Crash Probe Focuses on Identity of Smuggler

As specially trained California Highway Patrol investigators continued to probe the deadly crash of a truck crammed with illegal immigrants, one key question remained unanswered Sunday: Which of the seven dead or 18 injured was the smuggler who decided to risk a high-speed escape?

CHP spokeswoman Julie Page said investigators have not yet been able to determine the identity of the driver/smuggler. Finding the driver is a major goal of the CHP’s Major Accident Investigation Team, which probes all crashes in which four or more people are killed, she said.

Federal officials have vowed that the smuggler will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible if he survived the crash. An attempt also will be made to see if he is part of an organized ring, they said.

A 1994 law calls for sentences up to life in prison or capital punishment for smugglers involved in incidents in which people are injured or killed.

“Smugglers are animals, parasites,” said Johnny Williams, chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector.

But language difficulties and the illegal immigrants’ code of silence may hamper identification of the smuggler.

The crash occurred at dawn Saturday in a part of the lush and hilly Del Luz Canyon just north of the San Diego County-Riverside County line and northwest of Interstate 15.

Border Patrol officers in a marked car--parked along Sandia Creek Drive outside the San Diego County community of Fallbrook--first spotted the truck as it drove north in the darkness.

Sandia Creek Drive, a winding, hilly two-lane road set amid avocado groves, is one of several back roads used by smugglers of illegal immigrants to avoid the Border Patrol checkpoint at Temecula along I-15. They can get to the freeway, north of the checkpoint, by taking Sandia Creek to Rancho California Road.

Noticing that the truck seemed crammed with men beneath its camper shell, the agents followed it for several miles as it crossed into Riverside County. A license plate check revealed that the truck was stolen, authorities said.

With the Border Patrol car half a mile behind and out of sight, the 1989 GMC pickup came to the hilltop intersection of Sandia Creek and Avenida Del Oro. But rather than turn east toward I-15, the driver turned west in an apparent effort to elude the Border Patrol by heading into a web of rural roads.

Investigators said the driver hit the gas as the truck went downhill and immediately lost control. About 150 feet of skid marks indicate that the car may have been going 50 to 70 mph, they said, before it flipped and landed upside down in a shallow gully. The camper shell broke apart and bodies were strewn about.

Initial reports indicate that the immigrants may have paid $300 each to be smuggled to Los Angeles and that some had spent 12 hours or longer in the truck as it entered the United States via Arizona by evading numerous checkpoints.

Border Patrol officials said that Saturday’s crash was not caused by a chase but rather by the smuggler’s decision to drive recklessly and endanger lives.

Still, the Mexican Foreign Ministry, linking the Temecula crash with the videotaped beating last week of two illegal immigrants by Riverside County deputies, called Sunday for “a review of the methods and procedures for applying immigration law” in the United States.

By Sunday, at least six of the 18 injured had been released from hospitals into the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Of those remaining in hospitals, three were listed in critical condition.