Victims of deadly Oregon highway crash were farmworkers, union says

The victims of one of Oregon’s deadliest highway crashes were farmworkers traveling in a van at an hour when agricultural laborers typically commute home after toiling in the harvest, the state’s farmworkers union said.

Authorities have not yet released the names of the seven who died or the four who were injured when a semitruck ran off Interstate 5 on Thursday and slammed into the van as it was parked on the roadside near Albany, in an agricultural area of the Willamette Valley.

But the union, the Woodburn-based PCUN, said in a statement late Friday that the 11 people in the vehicle were farmworkers and it has been in contact with some of their families to support them. It also offered condolences to those affected by the tragedy.