Thread: Killer of Border Patrol agent gets life in prison

Killer of Border Patrol agent gets life in prison

By Greg Moran
11:22 a.m., July 1, 2011

SAN DIEGO — A drug smuggler who ran down and killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent during a chase near the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area more than three years ago was sentenced to life in prison Friday.

U.S. District Judge Michael Anello handed down the sentence to Jesus Navarro Montes, 25, in a courtroom packed with somber Border Patrol agents.

A federal court jury convicted Navarro on April 12 of second-degree murder. Prosecutors said he was at the wheel of a marijuana-laden Hummer H2 that ran down Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar on a frontage road off Interstate 8.

Aguilar, 32, was laying down a spike strip to try to stop the fleeing Navarro. Witnesses said Navarro swerved to avoid the strip, then slammed into Aguilar before speeding away and returning to Mexico.

Navarro was caught a few days later but released from Mexican custody two months later because U.S. authorities did not ask for his extradition in time. He remained at large until being arrested a second time in February 2009.

Aguilar was a married father of two girls.

Court records show that Navarro was a veteran “load driverâ€

Good! Send him to Sheriff Joe's prison!

Killing a BP or any Law Enforcement person should have a manditory Lethal injection or whatever the state uses for the death penalty. No need for the prisoner to be on the taxpayers free meal ticket for the rest of his or her life. Guilty...take em to the prison and execute them. Don't spend excess money or time..get it over quick. The old west method works great...at least added money was saved as the rope was reusable.

Originally Posted by BillCunnane

Killing a BP or any Law Enforcement person should have a manditory Lethal injection or whatever the state uses for the death penalty. No need for the prisoner to be on the taxpayers free meal ticket for the rest of his or her life. Guilty...take em to the prison and execute them. Don't spend excess money or time..get it over quick. The old west method works great...at least added money was saved as the rope was reusable.

Well, that too would be nice but as our government cowtows to Mexico, it ain't gonna happen....

Life in prison for killing Border Patrol agent

Elliot Spagat, Associated Press

Friday, July 1, 2011


San Diego --

A Mexican man was sentenced to life in prison Friday for striking and killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent with a drug-laden Hummer as the officer laid spike strips in an attempt to puncture the vehicle's tires.

Jesus Navarro testified during his two-week trial that he didn't drive the vehicle that hit the agent at California's Imperial Sand Dunes in January 2008 and that he confessed in Mexico days later only because authorities there beat and threatened him.

"What is being done is an injustice and I will be here on appeal," he said Friday in brief remarks to U.S. District Judge Michael Anello.

The judge rejected Navarro's claims of innocence, just as a jury did when it convicted him in April of second-degree murder and drug charges after only two hours of deliberations.

"This was a particularly brutal, violent and heinous crime," said Anello, who sentenced Navarro, 25, to an additional 80 years in prison on the drug charges.

Agent Luis Aguilar's wife, Erica, fondly recalled her husband's infectious smile and pancake breakfasts. She now hears her son crying in the shower, "Why did he have to die? Why did you have to kill him?"

Aguilar's daughter, Arianna, clutched her mother's waist and cried before she stepped on a stool to share cherished memories of hiding under the sheets when her father came home and getting toys on her father's payday.

Navarro was extradited to the United States last year following two botched efforts to capture him. In September 2007, the Border Patrol caught him with 980 pounds of marijuana in a truck that got stuck in sand. As he waited handcuffed in the backseat of a Border Patrol vehicle, his female partner in the front seat seized the wheel and escaped to Mexico.

Shortly after Aguilar died, Navarro was arrested in Mexico and signed a detailed confession to the killing - under force, he later said. He was held in Mexican prison until a judge cleared him of unrelated migrant smuggling charges and released him five months later.

U.S. officials were outraged by Navarro's release, but the Mexican government said that the United States hadn't arranged for extradition.

The U.S. government was offering a reward of up to $350,000 when Mexican agents arrested him again, in February 2009, near Zihuatanejo.

Navarro testified at his trial that he was in the central Mexican state of Sinaloa on the day Aguilar was killed and that Mexican authorities who were working closely with U.S. officials forced him to confess to a crime he didn't commit.

www.sfgate.com

Related:
Drug smuggler who killed Border Patrol Agent gets life without parole
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-242421-0.html

Got another one ready for trial and sentencing.

Mexican drug lord tied to death of ICE agent captured

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-242502.html