Five people died after a pickup truck got stuck in a shallow pond and sat with the engine running for several minutes while the truck was submerged just above the tailpipe, West Texas authorities said on Monday.
Ector County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Gary Duesler said witnesses called 911 Sunday evening and had to smash a truck window before pulling unconscious victims from the truck. "It wasn't a drowning," Duesler said. "The whole thing was probably less than 48 inches of water clear across the whole pond. If they'd have gotten out, they could have probably walked out. But who knows why they didn't."
Duesler said exhaust would most likely enter the cab of the pickup through air vents once the tailpipe was under water, but he said authorities didn't want to speculate on the causes of death. At a news conference in Odessa, Ector County Sheriff Mark Donaldson said the bodies were sent to the Tarrant County medical examiner for autopsies.
Duesler said the incident happened when the victims were apparently "mudding," where people try to drive vehicles through shallow pools created by heavy rainfall. He said emergency personnel intercepted one vehicle trying to take a female victim to the hospital. That woman was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other four were pronounced dead within an hour of being taken to an Odessa hospital, Duesler said.
Three victims were members of one family from nearby Kermit -- 42-year-old Lenin Polanco, 40-year-old Martha Isela Caballero and their 19-year-old daughter, Gladisela Polanco. The other victims were Maurilio Hernandez, 40, and Adan V. Saucedo, 32, both family friends from nearby Monahans. Odessa is about 350 miles west of Dallas.
"We were all just kind of shaking our heads, going 'Wow,"' Duesler said. "It's not something you would see every day and don't want to see every day."
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