Seven killed as car packed with migrants crashes while fleeing police
Seven people were killed and four others wounded after a car carrying illegal migrants slammed into a building and overturned in a failed attempt to flee the police in southern Hungary.
The deadly incident occurred late on Monday in the spa town of Morahalom not far from Hungary’s border with Serbia, police said in a statement.
The driver of the black sedan refused to stop for a police check and tried to flee the scene at high speed. However, he lost control of the vehicle, which steered off the road, crashed into a house, and overturned.
The car was packed with people. Besides the driver, there were 10 illegal migrants inside. The sedan clearly wasn’t designed to carry that many people, with the outcome of the crash being truly horrific.
Seven people have died on site, with four others, including the man behind the wheel, getting injured, the police said.
The driver, who was described as a Serbian citizen, had been detained. He now faces charges of human trafficking and causing an accident with multiple casualties.
Since the migrant crisis of 2015, the Balkans have become one of the main routes to the EU for people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa as they try to enter the bloc via Hungary and Croatia.
Hungarian police stop cars with migrants on a daily basis, arresting their drivers and deporting their passengers out of the country.
Human trafficking is a crime punishable by a prison term of one to five years, the police said in a statement.
