YUMA, Ariz. — It was 1 p.m., 113 degrees outside and Claudia Marcela Pineda Sarmiento only had 3% left of her cellphone battery when she realized she needed help, but it was too late.
Two hours after calling 911 she and her 10-year-old daughter were found dead, in the Cocopah Reservation near Yuma. But her 22-month-old-son survived.
“Please help me, I’m going to pass out,” she is heard telling C5I dispatchers, the Sonoran emergency center that gets border 911 calls. In the audio, you can hear a child crying saying, “mommy I am hungry.”
Pineda Sarmiento was exhausted and disoriented, authorities said.
She had been walking through Arizona’s desert with her 22-month-old son and 10-year-old-daughter hoping to seek asylum in the U.S., but somehow got lost said her husband Victor Hugo Morales Pinzón.
“She was a great mother, she didn’t deserve this,” he said with a broken voice, recalling his last conversation with her on August 25.
Pineda Sarmiento was the love of his life. One month after meeting each other in 2013, they moved in together.
In 2019, he relocated to the United States. Months later the couple found out they were expecting their first son.
The couple hoped to be reunited soon but were forced to try and do so after Pineda Sarmiento began to received threats, Morales Pinzón said.
“She was a fighter, when I met her, she had three jobs to provide for her daughter,” he said. “Until she took her last breath, she was a fighter, because she did everything so that my son could live.”
C5i said given Pineda Sarmiento’s low battery status, they were only able to get a general area of her whereabouts, but not an exact location.
They provided that information to U.S. Border Patrol, who then sent agents from CBP’s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) Yuma Air and Marine Branch and Border Patrol agents from the Yuma sector to locate the family.
Two hours after her 911 call, they located her, but she was already dead. Her 22-month-old-son Krysthyan was alive by her side.
“He was a little lethargic, kind of like not responding, not all there,” Somerton Cocopah Fire Department Battalion Chief Louie Carlos said. “Where he was found, it’s an area about a mile, mile and a half to the closes resident which is Cocopah Reservation.”
It took search and rescue another hour to locate the remains of 10-year-old Maria Jose Sanchez Pineda, authorities said.
“Sometimes the desperation of wanting to have a united family drives us to make bad decisions that can cost us our lives,” Morales Pinzón said. “In this case, the lives of my family,”
Morales Pinzón said his wife and daughter are going to be cremated. He plans on taking their remains to Florida, where he resides. He has set up a GoFundMe account to pay for the cremations and transportation of their remains.
After being rescued, the 22-month-old boy was placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, CBP said. Morales Pinzón expects to be reunited with him soon.
“The person that died in that desert, with that little angel, was the world’s best mother, the best woman on this earth. She was an amazing mother, she didn’t deserve this,” he said.
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