Agent's suspected killer had escaped Border Patrol

New report reveals that a man accused of killing a local Border Patrol agent, and eluded extradition, had been in custody

By Greg Moran, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 12:05 a.m.

Months before a suspected drug smuggler was accused of running down and killing a local Border Patrol agent in January 2008, U.S. officials had him in custody, only to see him escape in a Border Patrol vehicle.

The revelation about the earlier arrest is in a seven-paragraph statement of facts in a court file for Jesús Navarro Montes.

Disclosure of the information comes after a widely publicized, bungled effort to extradite Navarro from Mexico in 2008. U.S. officials had been incensed that Navarro was allowed to walk out of a Baja California prison in June 2008 until it was revealed that the United States had failed to ask for extradition.

Navarro, who was rearrested and is charged with using a drug-laden Hummer to kill Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar, had been in the Mexican prison on an unrelated smuggling charge.

The federal court statement shows that Navarro slipped away from U.S. authorities in September 2007 — almost four months before Aguilar was killed — in the same Imperial County sand dunes where the agent was run over.

The statement by Agent Thomas Steele said agents were staked out in the dunes, an area popular with recreational vehicle enthusiasts and others 34 miles east of Calexico along Interstate 8.

Just after 4 p.m., agents saw a silver Toyota truck leaving an area called Buttercup Campground. They followed the truck onto the interstate, heading east, but the driver did not pull over.

The Border Patrol laid down a spike strip that punctured three tires of the truck, but the driver continued on, leaving the freeway and heading south into the desert.

The pickup eventually got stuck and came to a halt. According to the statement, a man who was later identified as Navarro jumped out of the truck along with an unidentified woman. They were soon caught.

How close all of this was to the international border is not known. The border in that area is a sandy road with concrete markers, but it is not clear where Navarro and the woman were stopped.

In any event, they were not in custody for long, according to Steele’s statement.

“Navarro Montes and the female passenger were arrested and placed in a Border Patrol vehicle,â€