Thread: Border police rescue thirsty migrant from well

Border police rescue thirsty migrant from well
Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:45PM EDT
PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. border police rescued a woman who clambered down a well after running short of water on a trek across the blistering Sonora Desert from Mexico and became trapped, authorities said on Wednesday.

After rescuing her on Tuesday, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested the Mexican woman and four other people traveling with her for illegally crossing into the United States.

The woman had slid down a pipe into the 30-foot (10-metre) deep well on an American Indian reservation southwest of Tucson to fetch water for two children aged 6 and 9, the Border Patrol said.

"Once she got down there she found that she didn't have the strength to pull herself out," Ron Bellavia, a commander with the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue team in Tucson, told Reuters by telephone.

Bellavia said the woman clung to a narrow ledge in the well for three hours until she was rescued. Rescuers treated her for dehydration and bee stings.

Last year some 1.1 million undocumented immigrants were arrested crossing the deserts and rivers of from Mexico, more than a third of them through southern Arizona.

Each year several hundred people die attempting the journey across the deserts and rivers of the border, most from heat related causes.

http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/600687.php ... tId=626556

Published: 06.20.2007

Border agents rescue woman from wellARIZONA DAILY STAR
Agents with the Border Patrol's search, trauma and rescue unit saved a woman Tuesday who was trapped in a water well on the Tohono O'odham Reservation.

The rescue mission began at about 10 a.m. in Sells when four illegal entrants turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents and informed them that five people were in distress in the desert, said BORSTAR commander Ron Bellavia.

BORSTAR agents, with the assistance of a black hawk helicopter and two tracking dogs, followed the footprints until they encountered a woman in her 30s and her three daughters, ages 16, 9 and 6, at 3 p.m. southwest of Cowlic, he said. The woman told agents that her sister was trapped in a nearby well.

Agents found a female 29-year-old illegal entrant from Mexico clinging to the side of a four-foot by four-foot well on a small ledge up to her waist in water, Bellavia said. She had slid into the well after trying to get water out for the group, who were all dehydrated.

Agents rigged a rope and pulley system that enabled an agent to rappel down 30 feet and attach the woman to his line. Agents above pulled them up, completing the rescue three hours after they arrived at the well.

She was treated for dehydration and a mild allergic reaction to bee stings but refused further medical treatment, he said. All five were processed and voluntarily returned to Mexico.

There were 12 BORSTAR agents who participated in the rescue, including six who are specially trained in rope systems, Bellavia said. The unit had performed rope rescues before but never in a well, he said.

From Oct. 1 through May, the Border Patrol had made 200 rescues in the Tucson Sector, the agency said.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/188409

Note the different accounts:

Excerpt from story #1:

The woman had slid down a pipe into the 30-foot (10-metre) deep well on an American Indian reservation southwest of Tucson to fetch water for two children aged 6 and 9, the Border Patrol said.

Excerpt from story #2:

She had slid into the well after trying to get water out for the group, who were all dehydrated.

Hmmm........seems as if the writer of story one is attempting to garner a little sympathy for the illegals. It was for the children, everythings for the children.

They should've rescued the kids, left the jackass in the well and tossed her sister in after her. Just for the two of them being stupid enough to drag those kids across the desert in this heat.

It's so hot here already that our kids aren't even allowed outside much past 11:00 a.m.. Our dogs aren't even left out, for God's sake, yet these kinds of fools do this time and again. Idiots!!!