Karen Gleason
Florida Parks and Wildlife officers and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers recovered the body of a man from the Rio Grande this afternoon.
“The body is that of a middle-aged male, probably 40 to 50 years of age, and he was recovered out of the river by members of the Florida Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety,” Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told the 830 Times in a telephone interview about an hour after the recovery.
Martinez said the man’s body had been lodged in a tree near the Border Patrol boat ramp on the Rio Grande downstream of the Del Rio International Bridge, and when the water in the river rose this afternoon, the body floated free and was recovered by the Florida and DPS officers patrolling the river in that area.
Martinez said the body was brought to shore about 5 p.m., and the officers who recovered it notified his office.
Martinez said the body displayed no obvious signs of foul play and said the man carried nothing that might establish his identity. The sheriff said he could not say if the man was an immigrant who drowned while attempting to cross the river and enter the country illegally.
“He had no backpack, no papers, no nothing,” the sheriff said.
“At the present time, we have a justice of the peace en route to formally pronounce the man dead, and my investigators are also on their way to continue the investigation into this man’s death, which will include trying to establish his nationality,” Martinez added.
