Thread: Border chase ends in teen's death

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Border chase ends in teen's death

Web Posted: 02/28/2006 12:00 AM CST
Jesse Bogan
Rio Grande Valley Bureau

BROWNSVILLE — Authorities are investigating a weekend killing in which local police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers shot at a 17-year-old car thief making a wild dash to Mexico.

Edgar Ivan Lopez Serrato of Mexico was pronounced dead at a local hospital after the early-morning shooting Saturday. Police accused him and a handful of his colleagues of stealing at least 40 vehicles this year and delivering them to a notorious drug cartel in Matamoros.

Three more people have been arrested since the shooting and police have linked them to the same car theft ring that apparently uses a master key to steal GMC and Chevrolet vehicles.

"They are linked to the Gulf Cartel, where we believe they are delivering these vehicles to in Matamoros," said Brownsville Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique.

After a high-speed chase, two Brownsville officers and three border agents fired at Lopez as he rammed a stolen white Suburban back and forth between a chain link fence and plastic barriers placed just before toll booths for southbound vehicles at the Brownsville and Matamoros Express Bridge, officials said.

"The officers felt they needed to terminate his actions to stop the threat," Manrrique said. "There were some people just running to get out of his path."

Lopez was unarmed, but officials said he was using the vehicle as a deadly weapon by trying to run authorities over at the bridge. Officials on Monday were awaiting surveillance video of the shooting, Manrrique said.

The Brownsville Police Department, which is handling the investigation, would not release the names of the police officers involved in the shooting, but said they are on routine administrative leave. A spokesman for CBP said its internal affairs group would do a routine review of the case.

Manrrique declined to comment on how many times Lopez was hit and how many shots where fired, pending the outcome of the investigation.

"We had casings all over the place," he said of the scene at the head of the international bridge.

Officials said police approached Lopez and another teen after they were seen breaking into the Suburban outside a nightclub around midnight Friday. A 15-year-old boy from Monterrey, Mexico, ran away and was caught. Lopez drove away, sometimes running stop signs and stoplights, officials said.

CBP officers laid out tire spikes when police told them the vehicle was headed toward the bridge, said Rick Pauza, spokesman for the agency.

"The driver, apparently, he accelerated multiple times toward our officers and Brownsville police," said Pauza. "The guy was basically using his vehicle as a weapon. Out of fear for their personal safety and the safety of others, they fired at the vehicle."

At least 13 shots cut into the Suburban, which sat behind the Police Department on Monday with its right tire shredded and four broken windows. It was draped with yellow police tape and stained with dried blood.

Mexico Consul Victor Treviño in Brownsville said Lopez was to be buried in Matamoros today. He declined to speak about the shooting, pending the end of the investigation.

"We need to recover the proper report to have more information about it," he said.

He said Lopez moved to Brownsville three weeks ago from Atlanta.

"The mother is very, very sad and she told me that her son never had a criminal record before this incident, but unfortunately he was maybe recently involved with a gang that stole cars in the United States," Treviño said.

The fatal shooting is the first of its kind at an international bridge involving federal border agents in South Texas in at least 10 years, Pauza said. In the past two years, however, agents in Washington, Arizona and California each killed a driver trying to flee the United States. Each instance involved a stolen vehicle.



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jbogan@express-news.net

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/new ... 924784.htm

Posted on Wed, Jun. 28, 2006

Officers cleared in fatal shooting of teenager


Associated Press

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - A grand jury refused to indict three U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and two Brownsville police officers Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a teenager who raced toward the Mexican border in a stolen vehicle.

Edgar Ivan Lopez, 17, was killed Feb. 25 when the five officers opened fire on an international bridge. A police report said Lopez, who was unarmed, was endangering the lives of authorities with the stolen Chevrolet Suburban.

Brownsville Detective Sam Lico and officer Rolando Trujillo had also been cleared in an internal investigation, Brownsville police Chief Carlos Garcia said.

"It's unfortunate that somebody got shot and killed, but he put himself in that situation," Garcia said in Thursday's editions of The Brownsville Herald.

The family of Lopez has filed a wrongful death and excessive force lawsuit against the city, the police department and customs agency.

The fatal shot was fired by one of the customs agents, according to investigators.

The three customs agents cleared by the Cameron County grand jury were Rudolph Hernandez, Gustavo DeLeon and Jaime Vidal.