US: 7 dead as SUV driver hits crowd at Texas bus stop near border

Seven people were killed and up to six were injured on Sunday after they were struck by a vehicle while waiting at a city bus stop outside of a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, police said.

Brownsville police investigator Martin Sandoval said the crash happened about 8.30am.

Shelter director Victor Maldonado of the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center said he reviewed the shelter’s surveillance video on Sunday morning after receiving a call about the crash.

The city bus stop is across the street from the shelter and is not marked. There was no bench, and people waiting there were sitting along the curb, Maldonado said. He said most of the victims were Venezuelan men.

“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.

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He said the SUV flipped after running up on the curb and continued moving for about about 60 metres. Some people who were walking on the sidewalk about 30 feet away from the main group were also hit, Maldonado said.

The Ozanam shelter is the only overnight shelter in the city of Brownsville and manages the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody. Brownsville has long been an epicentre for migration across the US-Mexico border, and it has become a key location for next week’s ending of the pandemic-era border restrictions known as Title 42.

“Some of them were on the way to the bus station, because they were on their way to their destination,” the director said.