10 people killed in SUV rollover near Tucson

Posted 7m ago

SONOITA, Ariz. (AP) — Ten people "stacked like wood" in the back of a sports-utility vehicle were killed when the driver lost control shortly before midnight on a remote southern Arizona highway, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said Sunday.

Joy Craig said at least 22 men and women were in the vehicle. They are all believed to be undocumented aliens from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and perhaps Mexico, she said.

"There was no rear seat in the (Ford) Excursion. They stack live people, as many as they can, like stacking wood," Craig told The Associated Press.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety said in a news release Sunday that the vehicle's driver lost control shortly before midnight Saturday for an unknown reason.

Most of the vehicle's 22 passengers were ejected.

Among the survivors, five people have been airlifted to a Tucson hospital and seven people were transported to hospitals in Tucson and Sierra Vista.

The identity of the driver, passengers and the vehicle's owner are being withheld pending their identification and notification of relatives.

The department says the cause of the rollover is under investigation.

Craig said investigators have not identified the driver. If the driver survives, Craig said charges against him would be pending.

"Basically, this is like a 10-time homicide scene," she said.

Craig said the remote area about four miles east of Sonoita along the two-lane Arizona 82 where the vehicle rolled sees a lot of undocumented aliens being transported to the United States.

"We see the people stacked like wood frequently," she said. "If they had had the right number of people in there and they all had their seat belts on, they would have lived."

Authorities are looking for anyone else who may be injured, she said.

Craig could not confirm reports of five victims who fled the scene and sought help from a gas station in Sonoita.

She said an unidentified number of victims have been treated and released from local hospitals and turned over to U.S. Border Patrol agents.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... rash_N.htm