LF: Fatal shooting after rock-throwing in Nogales (Border Patrol

Title: Fatal shooting after rock-throwing in Nogales (Border Patrol - Stands Ground)
Source: Sierra Vista Herald
URL Source: http://www.svherald.com/content/news/2012/10/11/333880
Published: Oct 11, 2012
Author: Jonathon Clark and Derek Jordan
Post Date: 2012-10-11 21:02:01 by Hondo68
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Keywords: began to throw rocks, agent began firing, secured the scene
Views: 980

NOGALES, Sonora, Mexico — A U.S. Border Patrol agent reportedly shot and killed a suspect in Nogales, Sonora, last night after being shelled with rocks near the border fence.

The suspect had not been officially identified as of 3 p.m. Thursday, but Sonoran media reported that he was between 14 and 16 years old.

Lt. Carlos Jimenez of the Nogales Police Department said the incident began when NPD officers responded to a report of suspicious activity on West International Street. The report involved males carrying bundles, he said.

"Our guys got there, they encountered some people who started fleeing south," Jimenez said.

Then Border Patrol agents arrived on the scene.

According to Border Patrol spokesman Shelton McKenzie, the agents responded to reports of two suspected drug smugglers near West International Street and Hereford Drive at approximately 11:30 p.m.

"Preliminary reports indicate that the agents observed the smugglers drop a narcotics load on the U.S. side of the international boundary and flee back to Mexico," McKenzie said in an emailed statement. "Subjects at the scene then began assaulting the agents with rocks. After verbal commands from agents to cease were ignored, one agent then discharged his service firearm. One of the subjects appeared to have been hit."

Photos taken by Sonoran media showed authorities and emergency responders surrounding a lifeless body on the sidewalk on the south side of the borderfront Calle Internacional, near the intersection with Calle Ingenieros. Some of the photos showed a pool of blood coming from the victim’s head.

Ramón Guzmán, mayor of Nogales, Sonora, told the newspaper El Imparcial that the suspect was shot eight times.

“Independent of whether it was a result of seemingly irregular or illicit acts, it is not the logical conduct to take the life of another human being,” he said, adding: “I hope it’s not going to come out (in the United States) that it was for legitimate defense.”

In a report Thursday afternoon on Radio XENY of Nogales, Sonora, reporter Cesar Barron said that according to an eyewitness, two males were climbing on the border fence, apparently on their way back from the U.S. side, when the Border Patrol agents arrived.

According to the witness, the agents told the suspects that they were going to be arrested, and that they were better off behind bars in the United States than in Mexico. The suspects reportedly responded with an obscenity.

At that point, four more males arrived on the Mexican side and began to throw rocks toward the fence in an apparent effort to help the two suspects escape. That’s when an agent began firing, the witness told Barron.

Some of the bullets reportedly struck the walls of a medical office behind the victim. Luis Contreras Sánchez, the physician who operates the office, was quoted by the newspaper Expreso as saying the building was hit 14 times. Other news outlets put the count between five and “12 or more.”

Contreras Sánchez’s building and the sidewalk where the body was photographed are located below a point at which the border fence begins rising up a hill, and are approximately 12 feet below the base of the 25-foot fence. The fence is comprised of interconnected steel poles with 4 inches of space between them, so the shots could have been fired through the fence.

McKenzie said the Border Patrol notified Mexican authorities following the shooting and secured the scene on the U.S. side.

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection is fully cooperating with the FBI-led investigation," he said.

Wednesday’s shooting was the fifth incident reported by the NI since 2010 in which a Border Patrol agent fired at alleged rock-throwers in Nogales city limits, either with live rounds or alternative ammunition. It was the second fatal incident.

On June 17, 2010, agents fired on suspected drug smugglers after they were reportedly assaulted with rocks in the same west side area as Wednesday’s shooting. No injuries were reported.

On Jan. 5, 2011, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed 17-year-old Ramses Barron Torres of Nogales, Sonora when he and others on the Mexican side of the fence allegedly began throwing rocks at agents as they tried to arrest drug smugglers below the Hudgins Street turnaround.

On May 3, 2011, a Nogales-based Border Patrol agent used a pepper ball launcher to repel a rock-throwing smuggling suspect and seize $12,500 worth of marijuana. No injuries were reported.

And on Jan. 30, 2012, an agent fired at alleged rock-throwers below the Hudgins Street turnaround during a drug-smuggling bust. One man was treated at a Nogales, Sonora hospital for gunshot wounds to his abdomen and forearm, but he claimed that he was a bystander and had been hit by chance while walking down the street in the Colonia Buenos Aires.

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