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