Clever…but not clever enough. A Mississippi man was arrested by the Texas DPS Friday after they discovered that the “Lowe’s” box truck he was driving had a hidden compartment in which 17 illegal immigrants were being smuggled.
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Cezanne Megel Patterson, 28, of Jackson, Mississippi, was arrested and charged with human smuggling with the likelihood of serious bodily injury or death.
The DPS said in a press release that one of its troopers conducted a traffic stop on what appeared to be a Lowe’s Home Improvement store delivery truck outside of Del Rio, Texas, on US-277, near the southern border during the early morning hours on Friday.
After stopping the truck, the trooper interviewed Patterson and noticed he was demonstrating “strange behavior” and had multiple discrepancies with his travel itinerary, including expired tags on the truck, DPS said.
Patterson consented to a search of the truck, and when troopers went inside the cargo area, they found a false compartment toward the front.
Using crowbars and other tools, the troopers opened the compartment and found 17 illegal immigrants crammed inside the 3-foot-wide space, which lacked ventilation.
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Bodycam footage of the stop and subsequent search is disturbing — particularly when it becomes clear that there were 17 people stuffed into that non-ventilated space. In the video, you hear the trooper instructing them to exit the compartment one by one and sit to the side, with legs crossed.
While the illegal immigrants likely were not happy to be discovered, thankfully, they were. It’s impossible to see this story and not immediately think of the 46 who perished inside a tractor-trailer in San Antonio in 2022.
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The 17 discovered in the fake Lowe’s truck were treated for dehydration and turned over to Border Patrol.