Witnesses testified in court about brutal cold along the border between Manitoba and Minnesota, where a family from India froze to death in early 2022 while trying to walk into the United States.
Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel are accused of being part of a larger scheme to fly Indian nationals to Canada and have them walk across the border for the human smuggling ring’s financial gain. Their trial began Monday with jury selection and is scheduled to last five days.
A meteorologist told the men’s trial in Fergus Falls, Minn., that there was blowing snow and wind chill values that made it feel like below –30 C on the day Shand was arrested in a van south of the border.
The trial also heard from a gas plant worker who came across Shand’s van stuck in a ditch, and who said it was obvious the weather was not good for travelling.
Shand was driving with two passengers determined to be undocumented foreign nationals from India at a location where there had been three other incidents of human smuggling not long before, when he was pulled over and arrested by U.S. border patrol agents who charged Shand with human smuggling.
Hours later, the frozen bodies of a couple and their two children were found just metres north of the border, and authorities said they were part of a group of 11 that had been walking for hours on the open prairie. Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and their three-year-old son, Dharmik, died from exposure
Patel (no relation to the family) was arrested in Chicago in February 2024. The men have pleaded not guilty to several counts related to human smuggling.
