Autopsy: Woman migrant found entangled on border wall choked to death
PHOENIX (AP) - An autopsy says a Mexican woman found hanging on the border wall in southern Arizona choked to death in an accident when she became entangled in climbing gear.
The Pima County Medical Examiner’s report conducted for the Cochise County Sheriff’s office said Griselda Anais Verduzco Armenta, 31, was found suspended from the border wall entrapped by a cord, tie-down straps and seat belt around her neck, chest and arms.
The report released this week said Verduzco Armenta had abrasions to the head, torso and extremities, along with contusions, a laceration on her lower right leg and a fractured vertebra.
The Cochise County Sheriff’s office has said the woman hung upside down "a significant amount of time" from the wall near the eastern Arizona city of Douglas on April 11 before authorities discovered her and brought her down.
The body showed attempts to revive her.
Migrants occasionally die attempting to cross the border wall, sometimes falling to the ground.
Authorities did not describe the wall the woman was trying to climb.
Some of the last construction carried out before the end of former President Donald Trump’s term was in the Douglas area, with 30-foot-tall (9-meter) steel columns erected on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property.