U.S. Border Patrol agents have been complaining for years about losing radio contact with each other because of so-called “dead spots.”
Despite those complaints, agents continue to lose radio communication, especially in remote mountainous areas similar to the one where friendly fire killed Agent Ivie this month, the Arizona Republic reports.
A source told the Republic that Ivie and two other agents who were responding from separate directions to an activated ground sensor when they lost radio contact in southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border.
It’s unclear whether dead spots contributed to the friendly fire.
“You get dead spots and you just don’t have any way to communicate with anybody,” Art Del Cueto, president of the Border Patrol union representing agents in the Tucson Sector, told the Republic.
