The Victims Of The Key Bridge Collapse Did More For America Than Any Conspiracy Theorist

Almost immediately after a cargo ship crashed into destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in the early morning hours of March 26, conspiracy theorists started spreading false information and asking dumbass questions about the disaster. On the other side of it, actual journalists have talked about the real logistics and the fallout of the crash and collapse. We’ve, of course, covered that eight workers went into the water and only two made it out alive, but that just reduces these people to numbers.

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The real victims of this horrific incident – six immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America – have been sort of lost in the whole ordeal. After all, these were people who came to the U.S. and took jobs trying to fix a vital piece of American Infrastructure, which is more than any conspiracy theorist who blames this disaster on the “border crisis” has ever done for this country.

Anyway, a journalist at the Associated Press took the time to speak to the families of some of the victims to learn who they really were. The governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras confirmed their citizens were among the six people originally missing. (Two bodies have been found, and there are still four people yet to be located).

Here’s what the AP learned about Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, a 38-year-old who was the youngest of eight siblings from a rural boarder town in Honduras:

Eighteen years ago, he set out on his own for the U.S. looking for opportunities. He had worked as an industrial technician in Honduras, repairing equipment in the large assembly plants, but the pay was too low to get ahead, one of his brothers, Martín Suazo Sandoval, said Wednesday while standing in the dirt street in front of the family’s small hotel in Honduras.

“He always dreamed of having his own business,” he said.

Another brother, Carlos Suazo Sandoval, said Maynor hoped to retire one day back in Guatemala.

“He was the baby for all of us, the youngest. He was someone who was always happy, was always thinking about the future. He was a visionary,” he told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday from Dundalk, Maryland, near the site of the bridge collapse.

Maynor entered the United States illegally and settled in Maryland. At first, he did any work he could find, including construction and clearing brush. Eventually, he started a package delivery business in the Baltimore-Washington area, Martín Suazo Sandoval said.

Other siblings and relatives followed him north.

“He was the fundamental pillar, the bastion so that other members of the family could also travel there and later get visas and everything,” Martín Suazo Sandoval said. “He was really the driving force so that most of the family could travel.”

Maynor has a wife and two children ages 17 and 5, he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Maynor to find other work, and he joined Brawner Builders, the company that was performing maintenance on the bridge when it collapsed.

Martín Suazo Sandoval said Maynor never talked about being scared of the work, despite the heights he worked at on the bridges. “He always told us that you had to triple your effort to get ahead,” Martín Suazo Sandoval said. “He said it didn’t matter what time or where the job was, you had to be where the work was.”