A woman was surprised to find two people hiding inside her car trunk while she was traveling through the U.S.-Mexico border toward California for work. The pair jumped out from the back of her car when she pulled over to investigate the strange sounds coming from her trunk.

The incident took place Thursday morning as the woman was driving her blue Toyota Corolla to work from Tijuana in Mexico. She had crossed the southern border and entered into San Diego through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, according to NBC 7 San Diego.

She was about 40 miles away from the border when she made the shocking discovery in the trunk of the car, San Diego police said.

The driver heard strange noises coming from her trunk while she was driving just before 5 a.m. and decided to pull over somewhere in Sorrento Valley to investigate. As she stopped the vehicle in a building parking lot and opened her trunk, she found a man and woman hiding in the rear, police said.

The man and woman, believed to be in their 50s, were allegedly wearing black clothes. They immediately jumped out of the trunk and fled the scene on foot.

The startled woman called the police and reported the incident. An investigation has been launched to find the missing pair. It appears the man and the woman might have unknowingly been smuggled into the US, according to CBS 8.

Details about when or how the two people occupied the woman's trunk were not immediately clear. It was also not clear whether the US. Customs and Border Protection became involved in the investigation.

The driver cooperated with the police as investigators collected evidence from the scene, the San Diego Police Department said.

In an unrelated incident reported last year, police tried to pull over a vehicle involved in the endangered missing person investigation in Michigan. After a long police chase, they managed to get hold of the vehicle as it crashed. Upon searching the car, police found the remains of a missing woman, named Eleni Kassa, 31, inside the trunk. The driver was identified as the missing woman's girlfriend and was found dead from a possible self-inflicted gunshot wound behind the wheel.

Representational image (car)
Representational image (Source: Pixabay / kaboompics)