HOUSTON (AP):
FEDERAL PROSECUTORS said they will seek the death penalty against the driver of a truck in what authorities have called the United States' deadliest smuggling tragedy.
Seventeen immigrants suffocated in the truck and two died later.
Tyrone Williams, 33, a Jamaican, is accused of being behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer that transported more than 70 undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic on the evening of May 13 from the Rio Grande Valley to Houston.
Prosecutors say that when the immigrants began succumbing to the trailer's sweltering heat, Williams abandoned it at a truck stop in Victoria early on May 14.
VICTIMS
The victims, including a five-year-old Mexican boy, suffered from dehydration, hypothermia and suffocation.
"There is a serious risk that you would leave," U.S. Magistrate Mary Milloy said, denying bond a few days after hearing brief testimony after Williams's arrest on May 14.
She said Williams, a native of Jamaica who lives in New York state, was not a U.S. citizen, had no ties to the area and would remain in custody until the case is resolved.
Williams is one of four people arrested.
One of the four in custody said she was paid US$1,000 to accompany Williams from Ohio to Texas, a federal agent testified.
Fatima Holloway, arrested in Cleveland, also told Jeffrey Hudson, an agent in the anti-smuggling unit of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that Williams told her this was not the first smuggling run he had made.
"He (Williams) told her: 'Don't worry. I've done this before,"' Hudson testified at the bond hearing for Williams.
Authorities accused those arrested of trying to extort money from relatives of the immigrants for the safe return of a three-year-old boy.
The boy has since been returned to his mother, who is among 54 people in the trailer who survived and were put in custody of federal immigration agents.
