Authorities have named the man who is accused of killing several people when he drove his truck into a crowd of people waiting for a bus near a shelter for migrants in a city in south Texas.
During a news conference on Monday morning, police said that George Alvarez had killed eight people and hurt 10 others in Brownsville around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Police also said that Alvarez lives in Brownsville and has an “extensive” criminal history, including accusations of aggravated attack with a deadly weapon and driving while drunk.
Alvarez also tried to leave the scene, but several people held him down until police came and arrested him.
A local judge set bond for Alvarez at $3.6m. He was first charged with driving recklessly, but he now faces more charges, including murder.
Police have said that they don’t know if Alvarez did what he did on purpose, and they haven’t been able to confirm what witnesses said about the driver yelling anti-immigrant slurs at the time of the crash.
A Venezuelan immigrant who survived the crash told Monitor News that the driver, who killed eight people and hurt ten others, was yelling that immigrants were invading the US and making other rude comments. A similar witness comment was also reported by The Guardian.
The tweet below from The Monitor shows the pic of the situation:
Police investigating whether driver intended to crash into bus riders, killing 7 in Brownsville | #RGV https://t.co/9bUzwLaeFd pic.twitter.com/x1RPW9RA8H
— The Monitor (@monitornews) May 8, 2023
Most of those who were hurt or killed were Venezuelan, and cops have confirmed that all of them were men.
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The Accident Happened Outside a Shelter
The accident happened outside a shelter for the night in Brownsville, Texas, which is close to the border with Mexico. The only place in the city where people can stay the night is full, and it has been for two months.
The police said that several people died at the spot, and the eighth person died on Sunday night.
Surveillance video of the crash shows that the SUV driver ran a red light and crashed into the people waiting at the bus stop.
The director of the shelter, Victor Maldonado, told the media, “The video shows that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran a light that was about a hundred feet away and drove right through the people waiting at the bus stop.”
As of Monday morning, the police had not said who the driver was. Police said Monday that officials took a blood sample from the driver to check for possible drugs, but the results of those tests have also not been made public.
Police said that Alvarez wasn’t cooperating with them and gave them different names, which made it take longer for the public to find out who he was.
Four days before Title 42 was set to end, people were killed by trucks. Title 42 was a program from the time of Covid that let migrants be sent away.
A few days before the crash, the US Chief of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said that immigration officials were facing “extremely challenging” situations along the border with Mexico, where Title 42 is about to end.
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