He tells the jury in driver’s trial of efforts to cool off, save an immigrant in major distress
By Harvey Rice
The Houston Chronicle (Texas)
Copyright 2006 The Houston Chronicle
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
The memory of trying to save a convulsing heat-stroke victim who had been pulled from a trailer full of bodies still haunts paramedic Rick Streeter.
“I still have nightmares about it,” the 18-year veteran of the Quail Creek Volunteer Fire Department said Wednesday after testifying in the immigrant-smuggling trial of Tyrone Williams.
Streeter was one of the emergency workers called to the truck stop in Victoria where Williams had abandoned his truck trailer in May 2003 after a bungled smuggling attempt that left 19 illegal immigrants dead.
“I was in shock,” he said outside the federal courtroom in downtown Houston. “I’ve never seen this many bodies in one place.”
Williams, 35, a legal Jamaican immigrant from Schenectady, N.Y., is on trial for the second time on 58 smuggling counts, 20 of which could bring a death sentence. His first trial ended in a hung jury last year.
Prosecutors say Williams ignored the plight of about 100 people suffering from intense heat and lack of air inside his trailer.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rodriguez, Streeter said he helped pull a man who was having seizures from a pile of bodies in the trailer. He said he helped place the man in an ambulance with another victim and tried to cool him with water and ice packs.
The convulsions, vomiting and involuntary urination continued during the 10-minute ride to the hospital, making it impossible to insert a needle in the man’s arm to give him fluids, Streeter told the jury.
“This is the worst case of hyperthermia I have ever dealt with,” he said, adding that he has handled many heat-stroke cases.
Both victims in the ambulance were still convulsing when they arrived at an emergency room, Streeter said. He later heard that one had died.
Jurors also viewed a videotape showing one of the trailer victims bursting into the Exxon Speedy Stop truck stop after Williams opened the trailer doors.
The tape shows Williams purchasing water twice, as did Fatima Holloway, who rode in the truck cab with him. During her second purchase, a bare-chested man can be seen running into the store and shouting in Spanish, “911! They tried to kill me!”
Clerk Eloy Garcia asks, “Who?”
“One of ... Salvadorans,” the man replies. “Please. I am thirsty. Water.”
Garcia calls the 911 operator as Holloway leaves the store.
Garcia testified Wednesday that he locked the store and offered a coat to the man, who was shivering. He said the man sank to his knees and sobbed loudly in “a very strong, scared cry.”
Williams’ attorney, Craig Washington, says his client didn’t know how many people were in the trailer and wasn’t aware of their distress until he arrived at the truck stop and began shoving bottles of water through a hole where the riders had punched out a taillight.
Jurors also heard from the first of 19 survivors who are scheduled to testify.
Jose Juan Roldan Castro, 30, of Puebla, Mexico, testified that he paid $1,000 to avoid swimming across the Rio Grande and instead be driven from Matamoros, Mexico, to Brownsville.
After crossing the border, Roldan said, he waited for four days in a drop house run by Rosa Sarrata Gonzalez, who was sentenced in September to 12 years and seven months in prison for her role.
Roldan said he was promised a ride to Houston in the cab of a tractor-trailer for $850.