OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — A railroad grain car filled with 11 people may have spent as long as four months in storage in El Reno before being moved to Iowa, where their bodies were found Monday, the Oklahoman reports.
Causes of death have not been determined, but it appears the victims may have starved to death or suffocated in the summer heat, officials said.
The railroad car came out of Matamoros, Mexico, and entered the United States in Brownsville, Texas, on June 15, said Jerry Heinauer, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for Nebraska and Iowa.
The car “belonged to Union Pacific Railroad and was loaned to another railroad company in El Reno … and came back to Union Pacific on Oct. 10,” Heinauer said. “From the information I have, this railroad car was … in Oklahoma from June 15 to Oct. 12, at which time it proceeded to Denison, Iowa.”
On Monday, workers preparing to load the car with grain in a rural area outside Denison discovered the decomposed bodies, said Sgt. Robert Hansen, spokesman for the Iowa Public Safety Department.
“We are treating it as a crime scene, in case it turns out down the line that there was a crime,” Hansen said. “There are no obvious signs of trauma.”
Heinauer said the victims — whose nationalities, ages and genders have not been released — apparently entered the car in Mexico and could not get out. The car could only be opened from the outside, he said.
“We’re going to be looking at this not only as a tragic and horrific act, but also to see if this was a smuggling operation,” Heinauer said. “If these people were victims of a smuggling ring, we’ll dedicate our resources to identifying and prosecuting the persons responsible.”
Before the bodies were found, the car joined a train leaving Oklahoma City and passed through Kansas City, Mo., before reaching Iowa, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said. Tuesday morning, the railroad car was moved to Des Moines, Iowa.
Once there, Hansen said, the bodies were removed from the car and taken to the state medical examiner’s office “in the best possible condition.”
Kevin Teale, communications director for the medical examiner, said in a news release that it could take months to obtain autopsy results and victim identifications.
A forensic anthropologist has been called in to assist with the bodies, he said.
Corinne Stern, the chief medical examiner in El Paso County, Texas, said the victims may have become delirious and suffered hallucinations, severe cramping, headaches and vomiting before succumbing to heat or lack of oxygen.
“They were probably subjected to temperatures equivalent to those inside a locked car during the heat of summer,” said Stern, who is not involved in the investigation.
Officials with the INS have been in constant contact with the Mexican consulate and with other agencies in Mexico, Heinauer said. State and federal agencies are also aiding the investigation.
Davis said the bodies were found inside a grain car, a type of railroad car used largely on a seasonal basis.
“This time of year is when a grain car is very busy,” Davis said. “During the spring and summer, they’re not used much, so you store those cars.”
Union Pacific may have rented a section of track from a smaller railroad company to park the car during the summer months, he said.
Heinauer said similar tragedies have occurred in the past, but none so far north of the Mexican border.
“Illegal aliens use the railroads consistently close to the border to get out of the immediate area,” he said. “Unfortunately, the service does have some experience with this in the past, but never so far from where the people entered the car.”
Julio Salinas, a supervisory agent with the U.S. Border Patrol at McAllen, Texas, said it is not unusual for immigrants to hide in railroad cars. Authorities often check the cars for stowaways, he said.
“Most recently, a couple of months ago, we found 26 that had been inside a hopper car a couple of hours, and some of them were dehydrated,” Salinas said. “There were no fatalities.”
In 1987, Border Patrol agents found 18 Mexican immigrants dead and one barely alive in a boxcar left on a railroad siding in Sierra Blanca, Texas. The survivor told authorities the man who smuggled them across the border had put them aboard a boxcar in El Paso and locked the door.