Federal officials have said that a 24-year-old Guatemalan woman clung for more than 20 minutes to the top of the U.S.-Mexico border wall before falling to her death earlier this month.
The news comes from a preliminary investigation of the March 21 incident , according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release on Friday.
The information was released by the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviewed radio traffic, remote video surveillance systems footage, body-worn camera footage and interviews of migrants and CBP personnel, federal officials said.
San Diego police and the county Medical Examiner’s Office are investigating the woman’s death. Federal investigators will also review the incident.
In the news release, U.S. Border Patrol officials said they received a call about a group of people moving toward the border wall, less than 3 miles west of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, around 10:27 p.m.
The wall is about 30 feet tall in the area with two walls — a primary and secondary — made of metal posts with electrical conduit running across the top. In between the walls is an open space.
A few minutes after the group was spotted, a Border Patrol agent arrived between the primary and secondary walls. The agent saw the woman on the south side of the secondary wall and told her not to go over the top to the north side and climb down, the preliminary investigation reported.
The woman continued to scale the wall and crossed to the north side, officials said. She was unable to climb the rest of the distance down the fence.
The agent called for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, and the woman began yelling for help, officials said. The agent told her help was on the way, according to CBP’s preliminary investigation.
Around 10:35 p.m., an unknown individual approached the wall to tell the agent he could get a ladder.
“The agent advised the individual that they could not utilize any ladders until fire department personnel arrived,” CBP officials said in the news release.
Around the same time, the agent detained another migrant who was walking along the south side of the fence.
A second agent arrived on the south side of the wall — the opposite side of the woman — followed by a San Diego fire department truck, federal officials said.
The truck and second agent then turned around and headed toward a nearby gate that would provide access to the side of the wall the woman was on. Once it reached the gate, the truck could not make the turn and had to find an alternate route, officials said.
The woman yelled to the agent on the south side of the wall around 10:48 p.m. that she could not hold onto the wall any longer. The agent told her to continue to hold on as the fire department worked to get there.
The second agent reached the woman’s side of the wall. Both agents told her the fire department was on the way. The woman continued to tell them to “hurry and she could not hold on any longer,” officials said.
The agent on her side of the wall then left to go “meet with other agents and coordinate the transportation of other migrants apprehended in the area,” officials said.
Around 10:54 p.m. the woman fell, her head striking the concrete base of the wall. She suffered “massive head trauma” and was bleeding, the agent told dispatchers.
The fire department arrived at the woman’s location around 11:04 p.m. She died there.
Her identity was not released.
CBP officials said they would release the footage of the incident once it was “appropriate to do so and will not impact the ongoing law enforcement investigations.”
