Drug smuggler gets life term for killing agent
Reporting from San Diego -- A federal judge on Friday sentenced a Mexican drug smuggler to life in prison for running over a U.S. Border Patrol agent in 2008 while speeding across the Imperial County sand dunes to Mexico.
Jesus Navarro-Montes, 25, swerved and hit Agent Luis Aguilar, 32, at about 55 mph after the officer laid down a spike strip in an attempt to stop the Hummer that Navarro-Montes was driving.
The life sentence marks the end of a long and sometimes frustrating cross-border effort to arrest and extradite Navarro-Montes — who fled to Mexico and, because of a prosecutorial snafu, was able to avoid extradition for more than a year.
The collision occurred at a campground at the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, where Navarro-Montes worked for a trafficking organization that blended in with off-road enthusiasts to smuggle drugs across California’s southeast border.
After Navarro-Montes struck Aguilar, some campers watched his vehicle speed through the campground and drive two miles over the dunes to Baja California, according to prosecutors and witnesses. Aguilar, a six-year veteran who was part of an anti-smuggling team that worked in the area, died at the scene.
Navarro-Montes was well known to border authorities. A year before Aguilar’s death, he was arrested in the same area on suspicion of marijuana trafficking, but he and his female companion got control of a Border Patrol vehicle and escaped to Mexico, according to court documents.
Aguilar’s death triggered an intense search by U.S. and Mexican authorities, resulting in Navarro-Montes’ arrest within one week. But Mexican authorities released him in June 2008, saying that U.S. prosecutors had not submitted a formal extradition request. Mexican authorities in February 2009 recaptured Navarro-Montes and he was extradited last year.
In April, a federal jury in San Diego convicted Navarro-Montes on second-degree murder and drug conspiracy charges.
“It has been our desire and intent, from the day Louie was killed, that the individual responsible for his murder be held accountable for this crime,” said San Diego Chief Border Patrol Agent Paul Beeson. “The sentencing of Jesus Navarro-Montes today does just that. Justice has been achieved for Louie and his family.”
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