By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A man found bound and gagged near a cemetery just southeast of the Del Rio city limits Oct. 23 is believed to be an immigrant from Honduras, sheriff’s office investigators said.
Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez said Tuesday deputies were dispatched to the parking lot just outside El Cementerio Loma de la Cruz about 8 p.m. on Oct. 23.
The Cemetery of the Hill of the Cross is a historic burial ground that lies at the end of an unnamed road just southeast of the Del Rio city limits.
“A young man and a young woman were driving to the cemetery when their headlights hit what that thought was a body laying in the parking lot just outside the cemetery. They got out of there pretty quickly,” Martinez told the 830 Times.
The bound and gagged man, who was afraid the driver of the vehicle might run him over, rolled himself off the road and under a guardrail, the sheriff said.
“Our office was notified, and we sent a deputy and investigators out there and found the man. He was gagged and had been tied up with duct tape, hands, mouth, feet, everything,” Martinez said.
The sheriff said after deputies removed the man’s bindings, they learned he was a Honduran national and may have been part of a group traveling through the area.
Martinez said the man “wasn’t very cooperative” in providing detailed information to investigators.
The sheriff said he believes the man may have been with a group being led by a smuggler who tied the man up and left him after he could not come up with money.
Because the man appeared to be suffering from some type of head injury, he was taken to the emergency room at Val Verde Regional Medical Center, and then later transferred to a hospital in San Antonio.
Martinez said the man was released from that hospital after receiving treatment and noted the incident remains under investigation.
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