More Migrant Deaths From San Diego Fire

We previously reported on deaths of migrants from the San Diego fire in Octoier.  AP now reports that a married couple and a plumber were among those killed in October’s Southern California wildfires and identified by investigators Friday, nearly two months after their bodies were found near the U.S.-Mexico border. The San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office said the dead were Ruben Santos Ramirez, 28, and his wife Areli Peralta Rivera, 25, from a small town near Acapulco, Mexico; Lourdes Eugenio Tadeo, 21, from the same town; and Ruben Mendez Hernandez, 23, a plumber from Mexico’s Guanajuato state. The charred remains of the four were found in a ravine on Oct. 29. Investigators from the California Department of Justice used DNA analysis to help identify them. Another member of the group, 20-year-old Alejandro Martinez of Mazatlan, died last month at UCSD Medical Center.

The victims were among eight people killed by the Harris Wildfire in San Diego County, which also seriously injured four firefighters and a teenage boy and consumed hundreds of homes in the rural communities along the U.S.-Mexico border east of San Diego

KJ