Eight migrants died in a crash near the Texas border city of Del Rio on Monday after a truck they were riding in collided with another vehicle in the midst of a police chase.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said a red Dodge pickup truck was “evading” troopers after refusing to pull over for a traffic violation.
The truck collided head-on with a Ford truck on U.S. Highway 277, approximately 30 miles outside of the border city.
Eight people in the Dodge were killed in the crash, and one passenger was hospitalized. All of those in the Dodge who were killed or hospitalized were undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
All of the people killed in the crash were between the ages of 18 and 20, local officials said, according to The Associated Press. Seven were men and one was a woman.
The reported driver of the Dodge truck, Sebastian Tovar, allegedly ran from the crash. However, he was later taken into federal custody and was set to be charged by the state in the incident.
The driver and a child in the Ford were hospitalized after the crash.
Earlier this month, more than a dozen people were killed when a tractor-trailer and an SUV that was believed to be carrying at least 25 passengers in Southern California crashed. The SUV was believed to have entered California through an open section of a border fence with Mexico.
This story was updated at 11:29 a.m.