Rafters Taunted Before One Was Killed : Snipers Laughed, Shooting Victim Says

A woman who survived a sniping attack while rafting down the Rio Grande River last weekend told relatives that the snipers laughed and taunted them before killing her husband and wounding her and their guide.

Jamie Heffley, 32, told her parents and in-laws that her husband, Mike Heffley, even offered the gunmen money if they would stop shooting.

The gunmen, shooting from the rugged Mexican side of the river, soon sank the rubber raft with gunshots, leaving the three scrambling in the water and on the rocky shoreline.

“The way Jamie said, they even harassed them awhile, missing them before they shot to kill,” said James Aliano, Jamie Heffley’s father. “It was like shooting kids in a playpen. It was unprovoked.”

Oliver Heffley, father of the slain man, said, “Mike offered them money, anything, and they just laughed. They just kept shooting at them.”

Jamie Heffley said she was hit in the back and their guide, Jim Burr, 36, was hit in the thigh with a small-caliber rifle bullet. She said her husband put his body over hers and helped her out of the water, but then he was hit twice in the back and died about 10 minutes later. Jamie Heffley said she hid in bushes near her husband’s body for about 20 hours before she was found by searchers.

Burr, who Jamie Heffley thought was dead, made his way barefoot out of the canyon to go for help, reaching aid at about the same time she was found by others.

“She said nobody will ever know what a nightmare it was,” said Joy Heffley, the dead man’s mother. “She thought they (the men) were both dead and she was going to die.”

Jamie Heffley is now at the Hendrick Memorial Hospital in Abilene in stable condition with gunshot wounds in the side and shoulder. Burr is in stable condition at Brewster County Memorial Hospital in Alpine.

U.S. helicopters were brought in to help Mexican trackers traveling on foot, donkeys and jeeps in pursuit of the four snipers. The U.S. Border Patrol, the Customs Service and the Presidio County Sheriff’s Department have sent additional manpower to the area, a scenic wilderness that has been called America’s last frontier.