Briefs: SUV packed with 28 immigrants rolls

A Border Patrol spokesman says 16 suspected illegal immigrants were hurt after the sport-utility vehicle they were in rolled over near Sierra Vista in southeastern Arizona.

None of the injuries were life-threatening.

Agency spokesman Omar Candelaria told the Associated Press on Monday that the vehicle flipped Sunday while failing to turn safely onto northbound Arizona 92.

He says witnesses reported as many as 28 people in the vehicle; several who ran off were caught.

Candelaria says three of eight people found were taken to an area hospital, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety reported 12 others were taken there. Five people declined medical treatment.

Candelaria says authorities hoped to identify the driver and smugglers for prosecution.

Sonoita gets

its own book

“Around Sonoita” is the latest book to be published in the Images of America series on towns across the country.

The 127-page book by Betty Barr is largely a pictorial history of the area. The book is published by Arcadia Publishing and is available for $21.99. Information: www.arcadiapublishing.com.

An Images of America book on Green Valley and Sahuarita by Philip Goorian was published in 2002 and is available at local bookstores.

Sahuarita man held

in theft ring

Police said a Sahuarita man arrested Monday with a stolen school district truck is part of a vehicle-theft ring that also stole a town parks department truck and a U-Haul truck.

Joshua Woolen, 35, who had an arrest warrant for a probation violation, was arrested in connection with the two truck thefts after he attempted to drill into the gas tank of a FICO truck near the closed One-Stop store at Sahuarita Road and Nogales Highway, Sahuarita police spokesman Sam Almodova said.

He apparently was trying to fill the tank of a Sahuarita school district truck that had been stolen from the main school campus Thursday, Almodova said.

Police are seeking to arrest others in the ring, which apparently has stolen vehicles, power tools, a trailer and other items from several locations in Sahuarita, Green Valley, Corona de Tucson and Tucson, Almodova said.

A Sahuarita parks department truck was stolen from Anamax Park on July 8 and was recovered with some of Woolen’s items inside July 15 when Tucson police attempted to make a traffic stop and the truck’s occupants fled on foot, police said. Among the items was a flat-screen television that Woolen failed to return to a rental business, police said.

3 illegal immigrants

tied to sex cases

Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector arrested three illegal immigrants with sex-related charges or convictions for illegally re-entering the United States.

Agents arrested a 47-year-old Salvadoran man Saturday on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation who served about six months in prison for conviction of attempted rape and forcible sodomy in New York state before being deported in 2004.

On Sunday, agents arrested a 30-year-old Mexican man near Arivaca convicted in 1998 of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old victim in Illinois, whom an immigration judge deported in 2003.

The same day, a 23-year-old from Mexico City was arrested south of Ajo charged twice since November with having sex with a minor.