December 24, 2024 04:52 AM

5 Skeletal Remains: Border Patrol Agents Find Bodies Believed to Be Homicide Victims

The skeletal remains of five people were found in an area of Arizona known for being a smuggling corridor, according to Reuters. They are thought to be the remains of homicide victims from Mexico or another Central American country.

"It's not a typical migrant death site," Gregory Hess, the Chief Medical Examiner for Pima County, told Reuters. "Usually, that's people laying under a tree because it got too hot, and they're on the surface of the ground and nobody tried to bury them."

The cause of death is unclear, but authorities think the victims may have been shot or beaten to death.

Border Patrol agents discovered the remains last week. They were partially obscured by rocks in a desert area approximately 130 miles south of Phoenix, near the town of Sells on the Tohono O'Odham Reservation.

"We are treating it as a likely homicide," Hess said after a preliminary examination of the remains. "However, we don't know how those injuries were inflicted yet, and whether or not those injuries were blunt force injuries that caused the bones to be traumatized or were gunshot injuries.

"We believe that they are the remains of five foreign nationals who were killed either there or somewhere else and put in that location," Hess continued. He also stated that he thought it was likely they were killed at the same time.

The age, sex and time of death of the victims haven't yet been determined, though autopsies will be performed next week. There were personal effects found with the remains, including currency, that authorities say is consistent with them being from Mexico or another Central American country, or even somewhere else.

Arizona is located along an area that has a lot of human and drug trafficking from Mexico. Deaths aren't uncommon in the area, though they usually result from heat exposure and not murder.

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