3 dead, 27 injured after smuggling boat capsizes off California
- Boat apart in rough water just off the San Diego coast during a suspected human smuggling operation
- There had been about 30 people on the boat in severely crowded conditions without safety equipment
An overcrowded smuggling boat capsized Sunday off the California coast after crashing into the shoreline, killing three people and leaving 27 people hospitalised with a range of injuries, authorities said.
The accident happened Sunday morning off San Diego, with all aboard the 12-metre (40 feet) vessel jumping into the choppy water as it slowly disintegrated, witness video showed.
“It was a smuggling vessel,” Jeffery Stephenson of the Customs and Border Protection Public Affairs Office said. “Border Patrol agents are with a man we believe was the operator.”
“Smugglers don’t care about the people they’re exploiting,” he said.
“All they care about is profit. They had inadequate safety equipment and obviously this vessel was severely overcrowded.”
Those aboard were likely migrants trying to illegally enter the United States, Stephenson said.