By KATIE ROGERS and DAVID MONTGOMERYSEPT. 24, 2015

Six people were killed when an overcrowded sport utility vehicle believed to be carrying 15 immigrants flipped and crashed southwest of Houston early Thursday, according to Texas officials, who are trying to determine whether human smugglers were involved.

Police officials in Edna, Tex., said officers attempted to stop a 2003 Ford Explorer for a moving violation around 1:30 a.m. when the driver sped away, heading north toward Houston on Highway 59. Within the state, the highway runs from Laredo, on the border with Mexico, to Texarkana, on the northeast border with Louisiana and Arkansas.

Four people were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others who were airlifted to a hospital in Houston later died; one person remained in the hospital on Thursday, the Edna police chief, Clinton Wooldridge, said.

Several passengers attempted to flee on foot, Chief Wooldridge said, but were later taken into custody. Eight people were treated for injuries and turned over to federal immigration officials.

Some passengers were identified as being from Honduras and Guatemala, the chief said, but officials have not yet determined whether the victims were undocumented immigrants. The police said that the car was carrying adults and that the youngest passenger, who did not survive, was 18.

He said the Department of Homeland Security was investigating whether the passengers were being transported by smugglers, and the authorities were still trying to determine whether the driver survived the crash.

But “15 people in an eight-passenger vehicle,” he said, could be an indication of smuggling, based on past experience.

The early morning chase had lasted less than 10 minutes when the driver appeared to overcorrect the vehicle, causing it to flip over several times and eject several occupants. No other vehicles were involved in the crash.

“Something this tragic happens very seldomly, thank God,” Chief Wooldridge said. But he added that undocumented immigrants “bailing out of their vehicles and running off into the pastures” happens frequently in that part of Texas. In this case, the vehicle had been modified to fit more people; the middle seat was removed, and a rear seat had been folded down, the police said.

The vehicles are usually carrying immigrants who are being transported by smugglers for money, Chief Wooldridge said, adding that such vehicles can be pulled over as many as four times a week when officers in the area participate in programs like Operation Stonegarden, a Homeland Security grant program that provides resources, such as overtime, for officers to search for smugglers. The Edna Police Department does not participate in the program, he said.

Whether they arrive in the United States illegally or not, people fleeing Central American countries, including El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, are often trying to escape violence and coercion from street gangs. Jenny Bryson Clark, an associate professor of political science at South Texas College in McAllen, Tex., who has been researching human trafficking, said that immigrants from Central America often fall victim to smugglers when they arrive in the United States.

She said that they are frequently held in “stash houses” occupied by as many as 100 people before they are transported north, usually in overcrowded vehicles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/us...rash.html?_r=0