Does a video accurately report "breaking news" about a woman who found a truck full of children's bodies in Mexico? No, that's not true: No recent news story matches the narrative's details as of this publication. The video clips in the montage are years old and were pulled from various sources, including different real news stories about bodies found in semi trucks in New York, Texas, England and Mexico. They do not show a recent incident specifically involving the bodies of children discovered by a woman who was a truck inspector.
The video appears in a post (archived here) published on Instagram on January 18, 2025. Text captioning on the video reads:
BREAKING NEWS
Woman found truck full of children's bodies
Crazy
Woman found truck full of children's bodies
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Feb 03 15:01:52 2025 UTC)
The narration of the video begins:
This video was taken shortly after this woman found a truck full of children's bodies. I mean this is horrible. The horrifying incident took place at a gas station in Michoacan, Mexico where the woman worked inspecting semi trucks. But on this day this specific semi truck pulled in and something seemed very off about the driver. He was very nervous, tense and sweating profusely.
No such breaking news
A Google search (archived here) for the phrase, "'Michoacan, Mexico' woman found children's bodies" does not produce any results matching this narrative except for a January 28, 2025, Facebook post (archived here) featuring a different montage of video clips with the same voiceover script as in the post on Instagram. This second set of clips was lifted from a Euronews video (archived here) posted on YouTube on September 18, 2018. There are many articles in the search results reporting bodies found and mentioning Michoacan, Mexico -- but none involved scores of children's bodies or a female truck inspector who was later found dead, chopped up in a suitcase.
The distressed woman
Reverse image searches, including one on Yandex (archived here), using screenshots of the footage of the distressed woman tracked down earlier copies of the video but did not include a consistent or verifiable set of facts. Regardless of what may have caused the woman's distress -- it is not breaking news. The earliest copy of the video Lead Stories identified (pictured below) was posted on Facebook (archived here) on February 21, 2019. No corroborating news story was shared with the video. The Spanish language caption of the post, translated by Google, reads:
#Chilling: Watch out for your children... This woman cries in terror;
she says she saw dead or sedated children being put in a trailer. According to reports, it happened in Zamora, Michoacán.
Join Chiapas Uncensored<<<<
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Feb 03 18:09:36 2025 UTC)
Footage of Semi Trucks
The video on Instagram does not display the timestamps referred to throughout this fact check. For clarity, the timestamps in the Media Vault archive copy are cited here.
The video clips of semi trucks shown in the video on Instagram are traced to a variety of sources.
One short clip (0:08 seconds) showed a woman wearing yellow work gloves opening a red container truck. This video was previously posted on YouTube (archived here) by the "Shipping Container Safety International" channel on December 28, 2020, titled "OPNBar Demo - How to Open and Close Tough Shipping Container Doors."
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Mon Feb 03 18:32:45 2025 UTC)
Another video clip (0:12 seconds and 0:50 seconds) was taken from footage on X (pictured below and archived here) showing a situation in April 2020. The Andrew Cleckley funeral home on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, unable to keep up with the number of COVID-19 fatalities, was storing bodies in non-refrigerated U-Haul trucks outside the funeral home.
On April 29, 2020, New York television station Pix11 reported that neighbors had complained of a foul odor for weeks. Pix11.com followed up (archived here) on November 17, 2020, reporting that the funeral director was fined, lost his license, and the funeral home was shut down.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 03 19:32:43 2025 UTC)
In another clip filmed behind a barricade (0:30 seconds), a red and white semi with a white trailer can be seen behind a white tent (pictured below left). This is a lorry in Essex, England (archived here) that was discovered on October 23, 2019, with the bodies of 39 people inside (below right). The BBC reported (archived here) that the victims were all Vietnamese. The clip (0:44 seconds) showing a semi followed by a yellow and orange striped police van (archived here) is also from the Essex incident.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Instagram and BBC.com screenshots taken on Mon Feb 03 19:27:16 2025 UTC)
At the end of the montage video on Instagram (1:00 minute) is a street scene with many police cars and a truck with open back doors. This scene can be found at the 0:22 second mark in a NBC News video (archived here), posted on YouTube on June 27, 2022. The video is titled "At Least 46 People Found Dead In Semi Truck In Texas," and the caption reads:
Authorities say at least 46 migrants were found dead in the back of a semi truck near San Antonio, Texas, and at least 16 were hospitalized.
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Mon Feb 03 19:52:41 2025 UTC)
At the time this was written, CheckYourFact had reviewed a similar false claim with alternate footage.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Mexico can be found here.
