(The Associated Press circulated the following story on May 13.)
DES MOINES — The names of 11 immigrants found dead in a rail car in Denison last fall were released Monday by state health officials.
The victims were from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, said Kevin Teale, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Public Health. Their identities were confirmed by DNA testing done by the FBI.
“We’re very lucky to have made an identification on all of these bodies,” said Dr. Julia Goodin, Iowa state medical examiner. “The reason that it took so long was the condition of the bodies.”
Workers cleaning rail cars at a grain elevator in Denison, about 50 miles southeast of Sioux City, found the bodies on Oct. 14. The rail car had left the Mexican border city of Matamoros the previous June, was stored in Oklahoma for several months and then was hauled to Iowa.
“We had mostly skeletonized remains with no idea who they were and they were from several other countries. It took a long time to find family members to find specimens for comparing DNA,” Goodin said.
The remains were identified as:
Lesly Esmeralda Ferrufino, 18; Pedro Amador Lopez, 38; Rosibel Ferrufino, 29; Lely Elizabeth Ferrufino, 35; and Isidro Avila Bueso, 38, all of Honduras;
Juan Enrique Reyes Meza, 27; Omar Esparza Contreras, 23; and Roberto Esparza Rico, 23; all of Mexico;
Mercedes Gertrudis Guido Lorente, 40, of Nicaragua; Domingo Ardon Sibrian, 36, of El Salvador; and Byron Adner Acevedo Perez, 18, of Guatemala.
Goodin said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the Iowa Department of Public Safety and the Mexican consulate in Omaha helped in the identification process.
A telephone message left at the consulate Monday was not immediately returned.
Authorities said the four women and seven men apparently were latched inside the rail car by a smuggler and died of heat exhaustion or suffocation.
“The tragic and unnecessary deaths of these unsuspecting souls once again demonstrate the ruthlessness of those who smuggle people for profit,” said Alonzo Martinez, interim director of the Omaha, Neb., office of the Bureau for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Goodin said the bodies remain in Des Moines, but “we are in the process of releasing those remains.”
“It will be up to the families and the consulates to decide whether the bodies will be cremated or transported back to the countries to be buried,” she said.