The driver of a truck in which 19 undocumented immigrants suffocated pulled over at least twice during a three-hour trip between Harlingen, TX, and Victoria, TX, and heard screams but did nothing to help the people inside, the Austin American-Statesman reported. 

Driver Tyrone Williams reportedly made angry cell phone calls to an unidentified person after each stop.

"He was screaming, `These people are tearing up my trailer,' " said Jeffrey Hudson, a special agent for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. " 'How many people did you put in my truck?' "

Investigators also said Williams told a traveling companion that he heard a woman screaming "el niño! (the child)" and asked what it meant. The passenger told him she thought it meant a storm, possibly referring to the El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

Investigators said the couple waited in the truck while the immigrants were loaded, then drove north on U.S. 77. They were stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint, where Williams told agents the trailer was empty and his companion, Fatima Holloway, 28, was his girlfriend, Hudson testified.

U.S. Magistrate Mary Milloy denied bail for Williams, 32, charged with smuggling and conspiracy to smuggle at least 70 immigrants on May 13. Milloy said Williams was a flight risk because of his ties to his native Jamaica and investigators' inability to track him if he were released to his home in Schenectady, NY.

Williams and Holloway are accused of abandoning the trailer along a rural Southeast Texas highway and leaving men, women and children for dead.

Six other people from across the country have been charged as members of the smuggling ring. Federal officials said they were investigating the possibility that a business in Ohio may have been recruiting undocumented immigrants.