http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/38751.php

Published: 01.15.2007
Two dead in shooting blamed on border bandits
DAVID L. TEIBEL and RYN GARGULINSKI
Tucson Citizen
Six men smuggling drugs over the Mexican border were all accounted for by late Monday afternoon, but not all of them were alive, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Antonio Estrada said.
The bodies of two were found by the U.S. Border Patrol near the border, he said.
One of the men was killed by by a gunshot wound, the other the result of head trauma, Estrada said.
"He (the head trauma victim) could have been running and fell down the ravine and struck his head," Estrada said, "possibly trying to escape his assailants."
Estrada said three persons clad in camouflage and toting assault rifles accosted the six men, vying for their backpacks full of marijuana.
Deputies heard about the incident began shortly before 10 a.m. today when a woman in the Alison Springs area, just south of Tubac and about 20 miles north of the Mexican border, called to say four men showed up on her doorstep seeking help.
After admitting to backpacking pot into Arizona and being attacked by the border bandits, two of the men were airlifted to a Tucson hospital with gunshot wounds and the other two were taken into Border Patrol custody, Estrada said.
That left two missing in the desert and a search by deputies, members of the Santa Cruz County Metro Task Force, a multiagency anti-drug and anti-gang task force, and U.S. Border Patrol agents.
No names have been released and the two uninjured men in custody will remain pending an investigation, said border patrol agent Jesus Rodriguez.
In the past month, Estrada said the rugged area leading from the border to Tubac increasingly has been the scene of shootings, robberies and the smuggling of drugs and people.
"It's getting to be more and more dangerous," Estrada said.