CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Pointing their rifles, Mexican security forces chased away U.S. authorities investigating the shooting of a 15-year-old Mexican by a U.S. Border Patrol agent on the banks of the Rio Grande, the FBI and witnesses said Wednesday.
Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka died of his wounds beside the column of a railroad bridge connecting Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.
Shortly after the boy was shot Monday, Mexican soldiers arrived at the scene and pointed their guns at the Border Patrol agents across the riverbank while bystanders screamed insults and hurled rocks and firecrackers, FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons said. She said the agents were forced to withdraw.
“It pretty quickly got very intense over on the Mexican side,” she said, adding that FBI agents showed up later and resumed the investigation, even as Mexican authorities pointed guns at them from across the river.
Suspected illegal immigrants who had crossed over to the U.S. side of the border ran back to Mexico and began throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents detaining other immigrants, Simmons said.
At least one rock came from behind an agent, who was kneeling beside a suspected illegal immigrant whom he was holding prone on the ground, Simmons said. The agent told the rock throwers to stop, then fired his weapon several times, hitting the boy, she said. The FBI is leading the investigation because it involves an assault on a federal officer.
The agent was not injured, Simmons said.
A relative of the dead boy who had been playing with him said that the Mexicans — who he described as federal police, not soldiers — pointed their guns only when the Americans went into the Rio Grande in an apparent attempt to cross into Mexico.
The Mexican authorities accused the Americans of trying to recover evidence from Mexican soil and threatened to kill them if they crossed the border, prompting both sides to draw their guns, said the 16-year-old boy who asked not to be further identified for fear of reprisal.
Hernandez was found 20 feet into Mexico, and an autopsy revealed that the fatal shot was fired at a relatively close range, according to a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office. Mexican authorities said a .40 caliber shell casing was found near the body, suggesting that the Border Patrol agent might have crossed into Mexico to shoot the boy.
A U.S. official close to the investigation said authorities have a video showing that the Border Patrol agent did not cross into Mexico. In fact, the official said, the video shows what appear to be members of Mexican law enforcement crossing onto the U.S. side, picking something up and returning to Mexico. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity.
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