Alvarez’s bond was set at $3.6 million by a local judge. He was arrested for careless driving at first, but now faces further counts, including manslaughter.
Police have maintained that they have not decided if Alvarez acted purposefully and that they have been unable to substantiate witness accounts that the motorist was shouting anti-immigrant slurs at the moment of the incident.
A Venezuelan migrant who escaped the crash said the driver, who ki!!ed eight people and injured 10, was shouting that immigrants were invading the US, along with other offensive remarks, Monitor News reported. The Guardian reported a similar witness statement.
One of the Venezuelans who escaped the crash said the driver of the vehicle was shouting obscenities critical of the immigrants just as the crash occurred, saying the immigrants were invading the U.S., by @glong4. https://t.co/pedAgMxl52
— Michael Rodriguez (@michaelscottrod) May 8, 2023
The vast majority of those injured and killed were Venezuelans, and all were men, according to police.
The accident happened outside an overnight shelter in Brownsville, Texas, near the state’s border with Mexico. The city’s single nighttime shelter has been at capacity for two months, housing unhoused people and migrants.
According to officials, several people died at the scene, with the eighth victim dying on Sunday night.
The driver of the SUV blew a red light and plowed into the waiting throng at the bus stop, according to surveillance video.
“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” the shelter’s director, Victor Maldonado, told the media.
As of Monday morning, the driver’s identity has not been released by authorities. Officials obtained a blood sample of the driver to check for possible intoxicants, but the results of those tests have also not been released, police said on Monday.
Alvarez was reportedly being uncooperative and provided different names to authorities, delaying the public release of his identity, police said.
The truck murders occurred just four days before Title 42 was supposed to expire. Title 42 was a Covid-era policy that allowed for migrant expulsion.
Days before the crash, US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that immigration officials were facing “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico, since Title 42 was poised to expire.
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