SAN ANTONIO — The alleged driver of a truck packed with migrants who died in the sweltering Texas heat this week initially tried to pass himself off as a victim to evade authorities and may have been under the influence of narcotics during the smuggling attempt.
Those are among the details to emerge Wednesday about a man authorities say is a central figure in one of the deadliest human-trafficking incidents in U.S. history. With the deaths of two more migrants, the total number of fatalities climbed to 53.
A U.S. official and a Mexican official identified the driver as 45-year-old Homero Zamorano, a U.S. citizen who was detained Monday in a field near where the tractor-trailer was discovered in an industrial zone of San Antonio.
Zamorano was arrested by San Antonio police and later hospitalized for unspecified medical treatment, according to the U.S. official, who said the suspect at first pretended to be a migrant and appeared to be under the influence of narcotics.
Zamorano had not been charged with a crime as of Wednesday afternoon. He is one of three men arrested in connection to the tragedy.
Two Mexican nationals in the U.S. illegally — Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez — were charged with illegal possession of firearms after police traced the truck’s registration to a San Antonio address and then surveilled the house, according to criminal complaints filed against them Tuesday.
The trailer was discovered Monday evening near a stretch of railroad tracks after a worker heard a cry for help. First responders discovered 46 migrants dead in the truck. Seven others died later.
Officials said there was no sign of water or working air-conditioning in the vehicle, even as temperatures in San Antonio on Monday hovered around 100 degrees.
Smugglers frequently ferry migrants who have already crossed the border on foot north in car trunks or tractor-trailers to avoid detection at the ubiquitous migrant checkpoints in southern Texas.
Mexican officials and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, said the truck passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo on Interstate 35 on Monday. The truck’s passage was captured by security cameras.
Officials said the truck was filled with 67 migrants, and the dead included 27 Mexicans, 14 Hondurans, seven Guatemalans and two people from El Salvador.
According to court records and an interview with his sister, Zamorano has a lengthy criminal history.
Texas Department of Corrections records show he was last sent to prison for about 15 months in 2016 and 2017 for jumping bail and failing to appear in court. Before that he served nearly three years for residential burglary beginning in 2000.
His sister, Tomasita Medina, said Zamorano is the eldest of three siblings raised in the border city of Brownsville, about 280 miles southeast of San Antonio.
At about age 14, Zamorano — whom relatives call “Homer” — got involved with drugs and then dropped out of school around the sixth grade, she said.
“That’s the reason that we really never see him,” she said. “He’s always had an issue, a problem with drugs. He’s always in and out of our lives because of that.”
She said Zamorano moved often: from the border to east Texas, south Florida and ultimately Houston, after Medina and the rest of the family settled there in 1998. Zamorano worked on and off as a handyman, stealing to fund his drug use and spending time behind bars, Medina said.
The last time Medina saw her brother was a few months ago, when he visited for a week to help their younger brother with yard work. He was his regular self, “goofy” and “always making jokes,” she said.
Medina said she was shocked when she saw news reports Wednesday that her brother had been arrested in connection with the tractor-trailer deaths. All she could think was that he became involved due to his drug habit.
“Maybe they offered him drugs or money for drugs,” she said. “Otherwise, I don’t think he would have done it.”
Medina said the arrest was particularly painful because the family has roots in Mexico.
“I’m devastated on both sides,” she said. “It’s hard because we do come from a family of immigrants. My dad was born in Mexico, he was raised in Mexico.”
The tragedy is not the first time smugglers have packed a trailer with migrants with deadly consequences.
In 2017, 10 people died after they were left in a tractor-trailer outside a Walmart in San Antonio. The driver, James Matthew Bradley Jr., was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 2003, 19 migrants died after they were abandoned in a trailer at a truck stop south of San Antonio. The driver, Tyrone Mapletoft Williams, was convicted and is serving a sentence of nearly 34 years in prison.
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(Hennessy-Fiske reported from San Antonio, Winton from Los Angeles and Linthicum from Mexico City. Times staff writers Hamed Aleaziz in Healdsburg, Calif., and Cecilia Sánchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.)
