ELOY - Authorities say a woman, who claims to be an exotic dancer, was caught driving six illegal immigrants from Tucson to Phoenix.

Authorities say a Chandler couple posed as real estate agents not so they could get inside homes and show them, but burglarize them instead. Now, they are seeing the inside of a jailhouse.

The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed on Friday the identification of the three remaining bodies discovered inside a charred Ford SUV in Pinal County’s Vekol Valley last weekend as the children of James and Yafit Butwin of Tempe.

It began with the discovery of an animal skull in front of an Apache Junction-area home by a Child Protective Services caseworker and the stench of urine coming from the house. And it led to the discovery of 28 dogs being hoarded without food and water.

Crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and officials from the Pinal County Sheriff's Office are requesting that hikers in the Superstition Mountains not remove any remaining wreckage or human remains from Wednesday's plane crash that left six dead near the Flat Iron trails.

A 43-year-old San Tan Valley woman accused of leaving the scene of a collision after crashing her vehicle into another one and injuring two men told Pinal County Sheriff’s Office deputies she continued driving because she wanted to get her special needs niece home.

Bill Richardson

Police say a 17-year-old boy toting a loaded semi-automatic handgun was arrested along with two men after he later tried to blend in with eighth-grade students in the cafeteria during lunch hour at nearby Mountain Vista Middle School in San Tan Valley, triggering a lockdown.

It’s going on eight months since Pinal County Sheriff’s Deputy Louie Puroll reported being shot by smugglers while patrolling alone, out of uniform and without a radio, in the Vekol Valley west of Casa Grande. An area Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu has repeatedly said is controlled by Mexican drug cartels. 

A shooting in which an officer is wounded is like any other violent crime investigation.

A hiker who rescuers spent six days searching for in Lost Dutchman State Park was found dead Tuesday a short distance from a parking lot near the trail on which he was last seen.

Two top-ranking officers with the Pinal County Sheriff's Office were permitted to spend $5,247 to travel in November to a law enforcement conference in San Diego even though it was likely that neither would be employed by the department at the beginning of the year.

A group of Pinal County sheriff deputies mortally wounded a man early Saturday after he fired a gun at the officers, authorities say.

The human remains found less than ten miles southwest of Superior have been identified as an adult African American female, according to Pinal County sheriff’s authorities.

A Pinal County man lied to a sheriff’s dispatcher Wednesday after claiming he shot both of his parents following an argument.

A Pinal County adult detention officer charged with 18 counts related to defrauding inmate funds in September was reprimanded for mishandling the same funds nine months before his arrest, according to internal documents.

A 53-year-old sergeant in the Pinal County Adult Detention Facility was arrested early Friday on charges he committed fraud while on the job, authorities say.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office had 11 volunteers graduate from a training course that specializes in giving assistance and helping citizens in crisis situations.

Pinal County Sheriff Chris Vasquez is asking his Maricopa County counterpart Joe Arpaio not to bad-mouth him before the upcoming election.

The three-man race for Pinal County sheriff will be one man less following the Sept. 2 primary, guaranteeing the others a spot on November's general election ballot.

The Pinal County Sheriff's Office said Friday it will accelerate an internal investigation into employee e-mail use, a decision coming two days after a Tribune report revealed that a homicide detective had dozens of pornographic and racially insensitive messages stored on his county computer.

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