Posted:
Monday, November 21, 2011 6:09 pm
By Manuel C. Coppola
Investigators say three
unidentified men whose bodies were discovered Monday in the Tumacacori
Mountains were shot “execution style.”
Border Patrol agents
discovered the bodies in the remote Devil’s Canyon area and notified the Santa
Cruz County Sheriff’s Office at about 11 a.m. The victims were airlifted by
helicopter at about 5:30 p.m.
“This is the first triple homicide on my
watch," said Antonio Estrada, who has been sheriff of Santa Cruz County
for 19 years. "The killers were obviously trying to send a message to
someone. They were shot execution style.”
He said the bodies did not
have any signs of being bound, gagged or otherwise tortured.
There were no
identification documents on the bodies, which were found 4.2 miles west of
Interstate 19 in a “remote and extremely treacherous area." The bodies had
been there no more than a week, he said.
“Some of our investigators
had to be airlifted in and others accessed the area on four-by-four vehicles,”
Estrada said.
While the case is still
under investigation, Estrada said he suspects the killings were drug related
and that the men were“mules who got ripped off.”
Estrada was referring to
drug smugglers who trek through the desert to remote pick-up points.
He said it is premature to
say if this incident will mark a turning point in heightened border violence,
“but it is definitely disturbing.”
Other incidents
Santa Cruz County
sheriff’s deputies have already investigated at least four incidents in the
past two months in which groups of illegal border-crossers reported encounters
with armed men in the wilderness corridor stretching from the Ruby-Arivaca area
to the Tumacacori Mountains.
In addition, authorities
recovered a set of skeletal remains from the Tumacacori Mountains on Nov. 8,
two days after they were discovered by hunters. On Nov. 15, Border Patrol
agents working in the Peck Mesa area west of Rio Rico discovered several human
bones. Both of those cases are under investigation.
Border Patrol Agent Brian
Terry was killed by suspected border bandits in the same general area on Dec.
14, 2010. Terry and his special tactical unit had been deployed to the area
following a similar spate of armed robberies and encounters reported by illegal
border-crossers.
