Border Patrol Agent Killed In Car Accident Involving Hog

A border patrol agent and two other people were killed in a Texas car accident Monday after a car collided with a hog and then hit another car.

The accident happened on a rural road near Uvalde, Texas, a small town 110 miles of west of San Antonio and around 75 miles east of the Mexican border.

Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Sgt. Conrad Hein told the Associated Press that a Ford Expedition hit the hog causing it to veer into the oncoming lane of traffic where the car hit a Mercedes SUV head-on. Both cars burst into flames. The Expedition’s driver Ruby Garza, 51, and the Mercedes driver Antonio Cordova, 27, were both killed in the crash. Cordova was an off-duty border patrol agent. A third person, Julia Vasquez, 51, was a passenger in the Expedition and died later at the hospital.

Hein said there were two other people in the Expedition who were both injured.

Cordova was returning to his Eagle Pass, Texas, home after a shift when the accident occurred.

Hogs in the United States cause $1.5 billion in damage each year, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services is testing poison baits aimed at culling down the feral hog population in the U.S. In a twist the poison is made from preservatives used in curing bacon and sausages.

The preservative, sodium nitrate, is much deadlier to pigs than other animals or humans.