A semi found Monday night in San Antonio with a trailer stacked with the bodies of 46 immigrants was “cloned,” said the owners of a South Texas trucking company.
Four more people who were discovered still alive in the rig have since died, bringing the death toll to 50.
Felipe Betancourt Sr. and his son, Felipe Jr., said in an interview that someone cloned their truck, with the same color and identifying numbers from the federal Department of Transportation and the Texas DOT. But the cloned truck does not bear the Betancourt Trucking and Harvesting logo like their company vehicles.
“Ours is sitting right here,” Felipe Jr. said by phone. “My truck doesn’t have a window on the side like the one in San Antonio.”
He said their truck has not been to San Antonio recently, and has been hauling grain from Harlingen to Progreso.
Our reefer (refrigerated trailer) is sitting right in the yard,” Felipe Jr. said. “That one in San Antonio is not our trailer.”
Betancourt Trucking is based in Alamo.
He said his father started the business in 2007 and bought the truck, a Volvo, in 2020, a couple of months before the pandemic began.
“They have info on the truck that doesn’t belong to them,” Felipe Jr. Said, referring to the human traffickers behind Monday’s tragedy in San Antonio.