By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Sheriff’s office investigators Wednesday recovered the bodies of an African child and an unrelated man from the Rio Grande.
Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Gina Garcia, who heads the VVSO’s criminal investigations division, said the sheriff’s office was notified about the bodies between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Wednesday.
“We received some information in reference to two possible bodies that had been located in the Rio Grande about five miles south of the Del Rio International Bridge,” Garcia told the 830 Times in an interview Friday.
Garcia said at first investigators believed the two bodies were those of two African children whose parents had reported them missing earlier in the week.
“The parents had safely made it across the river from Mexico to the United States,” Garcia said.
She said the two parents, who are from Angola, a country in southwestern Africa that borders the Atlantic Ocean, reported their two children missing after they crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico and encountered Border Patrol agents on the U.S. side of the river.
“We went to the location (where the bodies were reported). Ultimately we got to the river bank through Guyler Lane, and we ended up recovering one small child, and we also located and recovered the body of one adult male, so there is one child still unaccounted for,” Garcia said.
Garcia said she was not sure of the age of the child whose body was recovered, but estimated him to be about elementary-school age.
Asked if the parents had given Border Patrol any indication of what had happened to the two children, VVSO Sgt. Mario Vargas, a member of the sheriff’s office criminal investigations division, said, “In that area (of the river), they’ve been having a lot of people from Africa crossing, and the (migrants) don’t know the area, and they could have been swept away or stepped into a hole in the river.”
Garcia said the parents of the missing children have left Del Rio and continued on their journey into the interior of the United States.
Garcia said there was no identification in the clothing on the body of the man recovered from the river, though she noted he was wearing a wedding ring.
She said there were no signs of foul play, adding she believes the man and the child drowned as they attempted to cross the river. She said the search for the body of the second child would continue.
Garcia said the two bodies were transported to the Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office in Laredo for autopsies.
The two bodies recovered Wednesday bring to five the total number of drowning victims recovered from the Rio Grande in Val Verde County this year.
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