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Sonia Perez D.
Guatemala City (AP) —Jenifer Julisa Cardona Thomas advised a friend to stay near the semi-trailer door. May have been saved from the deadly end that 53 other immigrants met when the truck was abandoned in the suburbs of San Antonio last week.
Cardona Thomas, a 20-year-old from the capital of Guatemala, said in a telephone interview from a hospital bed on Monday that it was already hot when she left the Texas warehouse on June 27. .. She climbed behind the trailer at the Mexican border she was waiting for.
The smuggler confiscated the mobile phone and covered the trailer floor with what she believed to be powdered chicken bouillon. The powder stabbed her skin as dozens of people sat in a stuffy trailer.
She remembered her friend's advice about being near the door in a cool place, and Cardona Tomas shared it with another friend she made while traveling.
"I told my friend that I should stay near the same place (entrance) instead of going behind," he is being treated at the Methodist Hospital Metropolitan. Cardona Thomas said. San Antonio. The friend also survived.
As trucks moved and stopped further to welcome more immigrants, people began to gather near the door like Cardona Tomas. She had no way of tracking her time.
"People were screaming, some cried. Most women were too hot to breathe and asked to stop and open the door. "She said.
She said that the driver or someone in the taxi shouted, "I'm about to arrive and I have 20 or 6 minutes left."
"People asked for water, some were in short supply, others carried some," she said. The
track kept stopping from time to time, but was moving slowly just before she lost her consciousness. She woke up in the hospital.
The driver and three others were arrested and charged by US prosecutors.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala has stated that 20 Guatemalans have died in the incident, 16 of which have been clearly identified. Foreign Minister Mario Bukaro said he hopes the first body will be returned this week.
Cardona Tomas said that the destination of the track for the day was Houston, but eventually headed to North Carolina.
During her migration to the United States, "she has no job and was asked if I would support her," her father, Mynor Cordon, told her family. She spoke on her Monday in the city of Guatemala where she lives. He said he decided to help her because he had just left without telling her family and knew of other cases of her children who disappeared or died. I did.
He paid her smuggler $ 4,000 and took her to the United States. She left Guatemala on May 30 and traveled by car, bus, and finally a Texas semi-trailer.
"I didn't know she would travel on a trailer," he said. "She told us it was on foot. At the last moment, the smuggler seems to have decided to put (her) in the trailer with her two surviving friends. One of them. Is still in crisis. "
Cordon was in contact with his daughter until the morning of June 27th. Monday was 10:28 am in Guatemala and 11:28 am in Texas. "We're going in an hour," she wrote.
It wasn't until late that night that the Cardona Tomas family learned of the abandoned trailer. It was only two days before a relative in the United States confirmed that she was alive and hospitalized.
"We cried very much," Cordon said. "I was wondering where to wake up and bury her. She's a miracle."
