Two girls from Mexico led U.S. Border Patrol agents to the body of their mother Sunday afternoon west of Bisbee.
At about 3:30 p.m. Sunday, an agent found two girls, ages 10 and 11, walking along Arizona 80 at Milepost 346, about three miles west of Bisbee, said Richard DeWitt, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. The girls, Nancy Valdez Hernandez and Sandra Valdez Hernandez, said they crossed illegally into the United States on Friday with their mother, Maria Hernandez Escobedo, and ran out of water Sunday morning, said Carol Capas, Cochise County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman.
Hernandez Escobedo, 39, began hallucinating and going in and out of consciousness, her daughters told deputies, according to Capas. At 2 p.m. Sunday, they left her to search for help.
After the agents encountered the girls at the highway, they backtracked to where they had left their mother, DeWitt said. At about 4:30 p.m., the agents found Hernandez Escobedo, of Durango, Mexico, lying on her back beneath a mesquite tree, Capas said. She was pronounced dead at 6 p.m., he said.
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There were no obvious signs of foul play, and the body was turned over to the Cochise County Medical Examiner's Office, Capas said.
The girls were returned to Mexico and turned over to the Mexican government, DeWitt said.
It was the 16th body of an illegal border crosser found in 2007 in Cochise County, compared with 14 in all of 2006.
From Oct. 1 through Aug. 31, agents found 186 bodies of illegal entrants in the Tucson Sector, which ranges from the Arizona-New Mexico line to Yuma County. That's more than the 164 found in fiscal year 2006 and approaching the 216 found in record-breaking 2005.
