Border Patrol agents rescue man forced into well
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Responding to an immigrant's cries for help, Border Patrol agents pulled the man from a 40-foot-deep dry water well that he had been forced into by smugglers in the southern Arizona desert near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Border Patrol said the 41-year-old Guatemalan man told agents he had been forced to slide down a pipe in the well on Sunday after he refused to carry drugs while crossing the border near Sells.
"They left him for dead in that well. He was unable to climb out," Border Patrol spokesman Peter Bidegain said. "The agents on the scene said he absolutely would have died. He had no water, no food."
The agents made a loop in a rope and used it pull to the man up and out of the well, Bidegain said.
The man was OK despite being in the well for about 24 hours, Bidegain said.
The man, whose name was not released, was being processed for removal from the United States, Bidegain said.
