METHUEN MA— The driver of a tractor-trailer that was found in a Walmart parking lot with eight dead immigrants and 30 others in bad shape is in federal custody, officials said Sunday.
James M. Bradley Jr., 60, is believed to be from Haverhill. He was booked into a federal jail on human trafficking charges for his alleged role in what U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin called “an alien smuggling venture gone horribly wrong.”
“We’re working on a complaint right now,” Durbin said. “He’s in custody and he will be charged.”
The truck was parked at a back corner of the Walmart parking lot since Saturday night. The eight immigrants are believed to have died as a result of heat exposure/asphyxiation, according to a Methuen Police Department news release, but an official cause of death will be Determined.
Officials said it was a refrigerated trailer but the air conditioning wasn’t working. Experts estimate the temperature inside the closed-in trailer could have reached dangerous levels; at just 80 degrees outside, the temperature inside a closed vehicle can reach 115 degrees in a half hour, according to the National Weather Service. Methuen reached Saturday’s high of 87 degree at 6 p.m.
Methuen Police was alerted by a Walmart employee who was approached by someone in the truck who asked the employee for water.
Engine 4 arrived at 12:26 a.m., Hood said, and firefighters started extricating patients out of the back of a semi-truck. The air conditioning was not working.
“Our paramedics and firefighters found that each patient had heart rates over about 130 beats per minute and were very hot to the touch,”
Police did not know the victims’ country of origin, destination, or ages of the deceased or injured, according the press release.
Four males, and one female are at Tufs Hospital in Boston. At least one person was being admitted into ICU, a hospital representative said.
The victims included adults and at least two children. The two youngest victims who are among the injured are 15 years old, police said.
While it is not known how long the tractor-trailer had been in the parking lot, the temperature inside the truck would have climbed rapidly, he said.
“Most of the heating that would occur once someone is inside of a vehicle that doesn’t have AC would occur in the first 30 minutes of them being in there,” Runyen said. “For instance, if there was an outside air temperature of only 80 degrees within about 30 minutes the inside air temperate of a vehicle would be almost 115 degrees.