Deputy: Desert Shooting Tied To Drug Trafficking
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POSTED: 5:56 am MST April 14, 2011
UPDATED: 5:00 pm MST April 14, 2011

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. -- Pinal County sheriff's deputies said evidence leads them to believe a shooting that left one man dead and another wounded in the desert along Interstate 8 on Thursday morning involved drug traffickers and a group that was trying to rip them off.

Officers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Border Patrol and Pinal County found one man shot to death and another wounded in the desert near a rest stop along Interstate 8, said Tim Gaffney, a Pinal County Sheriff's Office spokesman.

The wounded victim said he and about 14 other people from Mexico were traveling across the desert when they stopped to rest and were attacked by a "rip crew," which opened fire on the group, Gaffney said. He said deputies believe everyone in the group that had stopped to rest were in the country illegally.

About 2 a.m, Thursday, one of the wounded men called his daughter in Phoenix and told her he had been shot and was at a rest stop along Interstate 8. She, in turn, called 911.

When DPS officers arrived, police said they found the man, 35, shot once in the abdomen. A subsequent search resulted in the finding of the body of another man who had also been shot, Gaffney said.

"Deputies were able to speak with the victim briefly before he was transported, Gaffney said. "The victim reported that after he was shot, he ran and made it to the rest stop."

Investigators believe the original 15 individuals were smuggling marijuana into the United States from Mexico, Gaffney said.

Following the shooting, the "rip crew" members carried the marijuana to a vehicle which had stopped along I-8.

Detectives raided a home in Stanfield and detained six people believed to have been involved in this case.

The shooting occurred near Antelope Peak in the Vekol Valley corridor, known as a main thoroughfare for human and drug traffickers.

The area is just a mile from the area where a Pinal County deputy claimed he was shot by drug traffickers a year ago.

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