TEXAS: US Border Patrol agents shot and killed a man who had driven through a West Texas checkpoint without stopping for inspection, Customs and Border Protection said.
After a motorist pulled into the inspection lane at the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10 in Sierra Blanca, about 80 miles southeast of El Paso, but then didn’t stop, Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. Border Patrol agents pursued the vehicle for 30 miles before it finally stopped.
Four agents were approaching the vehicle when one yelled, ‘Gun!’ the agency said. Two agents fired their weapons.
None of the agents were injured.”A pistol-shaped pellet gun was recovered from the individual’s vehicle,” according to the statement.
It was the second deadly Border Patrol shooting in Texas this week. Early Wednesday, along the South Texas border with Mexico, the Starr County Sheriff’s Office said one person was shot and killed on the U.S. side of the border when Border Patrol agents came under fire.
Sheriff’s officials say agents had apprehended four drug smugglers and were searching for another when shots were exchanged between the fifth suspect and an agent.
The suspect was struck several times and later died at a hospital. The agent was not injured.
Later that day, a Border Patrol agent asked the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to rehear his appeal of a ruling by a three-judge appeals court panel that the Constitution protected a teen killed by a border agent, even though the teen was in Mexico when the agent fired at him from the U.S. side of the Rio Grande in June 2010. The agent says he shot Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca when rock throwers attacked him near a bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
