A Pittsburgh police officer on a safety enforcement patrol yesterday morning found an improperly hooked-up trailer and six undocumented workers.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette These five undocumented workers, from Honduras and El Salvador, were in the trailer stopped along the Parkway West yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

Officer Tom Jacques was near the Parkway West around 7 a.m. when he heard a chain dragging from a pickup truck pulling a trailer with a spool of electrical conduit. He pulled over the truck at the Route 51 exit of the inbound Parkway West near the Fort Pitt Tunnel and discovered the hitch was improperly secured.

"That's the kind of thing that happens. Vehicles break away and you have a thousand-pound missile coming down the highway," Officer Jacques said. "This is exactly what happened with the chipper accident."

The officer was referring to the April 13, 2006, accident on Route 8 in which Spencer Morrison of Cranberry and two of his triplet children were killed when a wood chipper broke away from inadequate moorings and struck their minivan.

Bradley Demetras pleaded guilty to causing the accident by not securely fastening the trailer that broke away and last week was sentenced to nine to 18 months in jail.

"This is what we're seeing, even after the media blitz," said Officer Jacques, who is assigned to the Police Bureau's commercial vehicle enforcement squad. "This is what we're seeing daily."

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette The hitch of the trailer had been tied with tape and the chain was dragging. Click photo for larger image.

After pulling over the truck, Officer Jacques and his partner found the trailer's lights were not hooked up, the truck had an illegal license plate, the hitch was not secure and the driver of the pickup did not have a valid license.

The truck and trailer were impounded and citations will be filed.

While the truck, with five occupants, was pulled over, a second vehicle arrived with three more men inside.

Six of the eight told police they were in the country illegally. They said they were subcontractors for Verizon, installing cables in the ground.

The owner of the second truck said the work crew had come from El Salvador and Honduras.

Immigration officers took away six of the eight workers.

The other two returned to the motel in which they said they have lived for about a month.