LOS ANGELES — An overcrowded smuggling boat capsized Sunday off the California coast after crashing into the shoreline, killing three people and leaving 27 people hospitalized with a range of injuries, authorities said.
The accident happened Sunday morning off San Diego, with all aboard the 40-foot (12 meters) 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 told reporters. “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 …
Keep on reading: 3 dead after smuggling boat capsizes off California