Baltimore: Two bodies of missing workers recovered after bridge collapse

Authorities have recovered the bodies of two of the workers missing from the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, Maryland's state police chief said Wednesday.

Colonel Roland L. Butler Jr. said shortly before 10:00 A.M. ET, divers found a red pickup truck at a depth of 7 meters.

“Divers rescued two victims of this tragedy who were trapped inside the vehicle,” Butler Jr. said.

He also noted that Maryland State Police notified the families of those found about an hour ago. Their names are given as follows:

Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes from Mexico

Torlian Ronel Castillo Cabrera from Guatemala

The workers, who were filling potholes in the bridge at the time of the incident, were from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, officials said.

Who are they?

These are the seven Brawner Builders employees who were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge the night it collapsed, Brawner Builders Executive Vice President Jeffrey Pritzker told CNN.

One survived.

“These are wonderful young people,” he said. “They worked hard. “These are wonderful, hard workers.”

Pritzker told CNN that he did not know how the worker managed to survive and that the survivor was not yet ready to talk about her experience, but that she was “very upset” and suffering from injuries and stress.

“It's amazing he survived,” Pritzker said, adding that the worker was able to swim.

According to Pritzker, most of the seven men had worked for Brawner Builders for years, doing concrete restoration work, including filling potholes on the Key Bridge the night it collapsed.

When the other 6 employees were presumed dead, the owner and senior officials of the company gathered the families and spent the morning with them.

“We will make sure families are well taken care of,” Pritzker said.

Pritzker noted that the company is working on creating compensation packages for families.

Initially, the Mexican embassy said the six missing workers were of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran descent.

Subsequently, Honduras' undersecretary for consular and immigration affairs, Antonio Garcia, told The Associated Press that Honduran citizen Manor Yasir Suazo Sandoval was missing.

According to Guatemala's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, two of its citizens, one 26 years old and the other 35 years old, died at the time of the incident.

For his part, Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced that three Mexicans were working on the bridge when it collapsed, local media reported.

Maria del Carmen Castellón, the wife of one of the missing employees, Miguel Luna, expressed her anguish over her husband's whereabouts. “They only tell us that we have to wait, and now they can't give information,” the woman told Telemundo 44 before the announcement that rescue efforts had been suspended.

Luna, 49, is from El Salvador and a father of three, Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, a pro-immigrant Latino organization, told The Washington Post.

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