Gurupreet Kaur, the six-year-old Indian girl whose body was found near a remote and deserted US-Mexico border died of heat stroke after her mother left her to go in search of water, US officials said Friday as they blamed people smugglers for the tragedy.
Occasionally, the hikers came across a piece of clothing, a water bottle, a backpack, or a .50 caliber bullet casing leftover from bombing and live-fire exercises at the nearby Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. But signs of human life are largely absent in this harsh and unforgiving landscape. The southern Arizona sun, 15 miles from the Mexico border, was brutally hot, even in the early hours of a March morning. The intimidating Growler Mountains loomed over the flat and exposed desert expanse from the east. Shade could be found under the sparse trees that lined a sprawling wash that snaked through the Growler Valley. But to reach the trees often meant passing through thickets of dry, thorny brush that surrounded them.