A Nogales-area rancher accused of murder referred to the body of a dead Mexican migrant found on his property as an “animal” in a 911 call with a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher.

The dispatcher called George Alan Kelly shortly before 6 p.m. Jan. 30 after receiving a report from the U.S. Border Patrol about an incident on the ranch. Kelly provided few details about the body's discovery and skirted around the fact that the body was human, according to the nearly 8-minute call obtained by the Nogales International.

“I only approached the body to make sure that the animal ― it’s not a vegetable or a mineral ― the animal wasn’t alive and it was not alive,” Kelly said during the call.

“There was no sign of blood. There was just an animal laying face down.”

Kelly is accused of shooting and killing Gabriel Cuen Buitimea, 48, after Buitimea’s body was found Jan. 30 on Kelly’s roughly 170-acre property. Kelly’s trial is set to begin in early September. He faces one count of second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

Kelly took long pauses to respond to questions posed by the dispatcher during the call. He remained vague in his answers about what happened and why a sheriff’s deputy was needed.

“It’s very serious, ma’am, and I can’t — I’m not going to talk over the telephone,” Kelly said during the call.

Kelly insisted that he needed a deputy at his property but initially refused to provide more details. Kelly referenced his Miranda rights and said that he didn’t want to get himself in trouble but also didn’t want to break the law.

Kelly mentioned that sheriff’s deputies had been out on his property earlier in the day to investigate a “Border Patrol drug running incident.”

No drugs or weapons were found on Buitimea when his body was discovered.

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Kelly first reported a group of men moving through his property at 2:30 p.m. in a call to the Border Patrol ranch liaison, who is tasked with helping ranchers along the borderlands.

In the call, Kelly said he was being shot at and was shooting back, court documents say. Kelly eventually lost sight of the group as they ran south toward Mexico.

Border Patrol agents and deputies responded to Kelly’s property to investigate, documented the incident and left.

“I’m not admitting to anything I’ve done but all those things tend to add up and I don’t know what happened,” Kelly said during the call.

“I just know what I just saw about 15 minutes ago and it’s something that an ambulance cannot help.”

Kelly denied that he shot at anything when the dispatcher asked for more details.

“I didn’t shoot at any — I haven’t said I shot at anything,” Kelly said.

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During the call, Kelly continued to sidestep calling the body a human body. Kelly referenced an incident where a woman was found dead inside a pickup truck in southern Arizona last year to allude to what he found.

“It’s a situation similar to that,” Kelly said in reference to the incident. “The only thing that I was referring to in conjunction with that accident was the body.”

Kelly said he would lead a deputy to the body once they arrived and said he did not know who the person was.

“I didn’t say it was anybody, I just said it was a body,” Kelly said.

Kelly first notified authorities about the body at 5:23 p.m. Kelly called the ranch liaison again and left a message on his phone saying that he needed to call him immediately.

“This is serious. Call me immediately. I can’t say more over the phone,” Kelly said during the call to the liaison, identified in court records as "Agent Morsell."

Morsell returned Kelly’s call about 10 minutes later and noted that he sounded nervous or scared, a noticeable change from previous calls that day. Kelly requested that someone respond to his property after saying that “something” was possibly shot.

“This is worse than you can imagine,” Kelly said during the call with Morsell. “This is bad.”

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The Border Patrol then notified the Sheriff's Office.

The Sheriff’s Office responded to Kelly’s property after receiving the call at 5:56 p.m. He showed deputies Buitimea’s body and said he didn’t know what happened to him.

“It’s a body and you know what I’m talking about,” Kelly exclaimed toward the end of the call with the dispatcher.

“Now you know that there is a body here. It’s not alive. A coroner will be involved sooner or later.”

Later, as Kelly spoke with detectives at the Sheriff’s Office, he initially denied he shot at the group before admitting that he shot over their heads, court documents say.

The autopsy report found that the bullet entered Buitimea’s body from the back lower right portion of his rib cage and exited from his left upper chest area, according to testimony from Jorge Ainza, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office detective who arrested Kelly.

Have a news tip or story idea about the border and its communities? Contact the reporter at josecastaneda@arizonarepublic.com or connect with him on Twitter @joseicastaneda.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Nogales rancher accused of murder calls migrant 'animal' in 911 call