Seven killed outside Brownsville migrant shelter after car crashes into pedestrians

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Seven people are dead after a car ran into pedestrians waiting at a bus stop outside a shelter for migrants in Brownsville, authorities say.

The crash happened on Sunday at 8:30 a.m. across the street from the Ozanam Center, Brownsville Police Department Lt. Martin Sandoval told KRGV.

Pedestrians at the scene were taken to a local hospital to treat minor to serious injuries. Reports on the number of those injured have varied widely.

Police have detained the driver, who is facing at least one charge of reckless driving and also is being treated for injuries. It is unclear what led to the crash. Local police are investigating if the crash was intentional or accidental, and are performing tests on the driver to check for drug and alcohol use. Authorities have not identified the driver.

Shelter director Victor Maldonado told the Associated Press that the bus stop isn’t marked and doesn’t have a bench, so people were sitting along the curb as they waited. Maldonado said most of the victims were Venezuelan men. He told the AP that he pulled surveillance footage of the incident.

“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a 100 feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” Maldonado said, according to the AP, adding that the SUV flipped after running up the curb.

The Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center is a homeless shelter that serves individuals and families in need of emergency housing assistance, as well as serving as a food pantry and providing case management services. The center, which was originally established by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville to house Central American political refugees, has a maximum capacity of 200 people.

With a public health order that allows the federal government to immediately expel migrants from the country set to expire Sunday, shelters across Texas-Mexico border have been preparing for an expected influx of people. On Thursday, the city of Brownsville extended a local disaster declaration to “proactively address the influx of [border] crossings and to support and alleviate the process and transfer of migrants in a humanitarian way.”

This developing story will be updated.