Man found dead in Big Bend National Park

John Dilmore / publisher
Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2011 9:01 pm

A man was found dead in Big Bend National Park Thursday morning after crossing the border from Mexico with six other men four days earlier.

At 7:15 Wednesday morning, a Park Service employee driving east toward Rio Grande Village was flagged down by a trio of men, later determined to be undocumented aliens, who were exhausted and had run out of water, according to BBNP Chief Ranger Allen Etheridge.

The employee called park rangers, and it was learned that there had originally been seven members of the group, all men, who had crossed into the park Sunday and gotten lost, Etheridge said.

By Tuesday morning, the men had run out of water and decided to head back south, but became separated as some in the group grew weaker in the extreme heat.

After being alerted to the situation Wednesday morning, BBNP Rangers began working with Customs and Border Protection agents to conduct a search for the four men still unaccounted for. The search was conducted on horseback, on foot and from vehicles searching along the park's roads.

The Park Service's plane and a CBP helicopter were also used.

Two of the remaining men were found Wednesday, alive, in two separate locations - one by CBP agents and one by BBNP Rangers on horseback, Etheridge said.

That left two men still unaccounted for, even after a Department of Public Safety helicopter was brought in to search Wednesday evening.

The search resumed at 6 a.m. Thursday, with searchers focusing their efforts based on interviews with the men already found. At 9:15 a.m. a CBP helicopter found one of the men deceased.

It was later determined that the seventh man was the group's guide, or "coyote," who was familiar with the terrain, and that he had separated from the group and headed back to Mexico, Etheridge said.

No further information on the men who crossed into the park was available as of Thursday.

Throughout the search and rescue effort, Park Service and CBP personnel shared joint incident command of the operation, Etheridge said, and had worked extremely well together.

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