Search continues for second body in Santa Cruz River | Top Stories

RIO RICO, Ariz. (KVOA) – Rio Rico Fire is working with multiple organizations to locate a body reported in the Santa Cruz River near Rio Rico following monsoon storms.

Deputy Chief Chris Renteria said the rescue began with confusion about how many people were in the water. Teams initially did not have clear information about the number of victims.

“A lot of the time, these people are swept from arroyos that originate in Nogales Sonora Mexico, right? They had no reports of people being swept in the water, so we didn’t have any information as to, yes, this is a single person. Or it ended up being two people,” Renteria said.

Renteria told News 4 Tucson they discovered the second body while attempting to save the first.

“Shortly afterwards, we did spot one body. We were unsuccessful with the box inch. And just a few minutes after that, we did spot another body,” Renteria said.

The search had to be called off late Thursday night due to low light conditions.

Early Friday morning, crews were able to recover one body.

“We had crews going both south and north on both sides of the river and eventually one body was spotted and extricated,” Renteria said.

The Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department says the body is that of a man in his mid-30s, between 5’8″ and 5’10”, with tattoos. He was not found with anything that could identify him and was taken to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Santa Cruz County is working with the Mexican Consulate to help identify him. Rio Rico Fire says the search for the second body was called off because of storms and will continue Saturday morning.