Shot by Border Patrol Agent : Group Calls for Investigation of Alien’s Death

A Mexican government representative and a Latino rights group have called on federal and state authorities to investigate thoroughly the “suspicious” death of a Mexican citizen who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in San Diego County earlier this month.

“Our position is that the shooting . . . is suspicious in nature and that the accounts given by the Border Patrol (are) questionable,” Roberto L. Martinez, co-chairman of the Coalition For Law & Justice, a civil rights group, said at a news conference Thursday.

The group, along with the Javier Escobar, the Mexican consul in San Diego, is calling on the U.S. attorney’s office to investigate possible civil rights violations in connection with the shooting of Juan Resendez Martinez, an illegal alien who was shot by a patrol officer on Otay Mesa Aug. 17.

Resendez, 42, a resident of the Mexican interior state of Queretaro, died from gunshot wounds to his head, chest and abdomen, according to the San Diego County Coroner’s office, which conducted an autopsy.

Other ‘Suspicious’ Deaths Cited

Apart from Resendez’s death, Martinez cited a number of other recent “suspicious” shooting deaths of Mexican citizens along the border, and called on outside agencies to regularly investigate such incidents.

“Accepting the fact that there are some legitimate shootings along the border, we cannot continue to accept without question the legitimacy of every shooting,” said Martinez, who also heads the San Diego office of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico program.

Peter K. Nunez, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Steve Casey, a spokesman for the San Diego County district attorney’s office, said the shooting of Resendez would be reviewed after completion of an ongoing investigation by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. Such a review is standard in all cases involving deadly force by law enforcement authorities, Casey said.

Subject to Investigations

Officials of the U.S. Border Patrol, an enforcement arm of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, maintain that all fatal shootings are subject to outside investigation--either by the Sheriff’s Department, as in the Resendez case, or by municipal police agencies such as the San Diego Police Department.

The immigration service’s Office of Professional Responsibility--a kind of internal affairs unit--also investigates such incidents, officials said, although critics have questioned the independence of that office’s inquiries.

“There have been and will be independent investigations of each and every instance” of a fatal shooting by Border Patrol officers, said Dale Cozart, chief agent of the patrol’s 800-agent San Diego sector, the largest such force in the United States.

The Border Patrol maintains that Resendez was shot during a struggle with an arresting Border Patrol officer in the foothills east of Otay Mesa, about two miles north of the border. The agent involved in the shooting, John J. McAuliffe, a nine-year veteran of the force, only fired after Resendez attempted to grab his service revolver, Cozart said. There are no known witnesses besides the agent, according to Cozart.

‘Absurd and Outrageous’

Martinez called the Border Patrol’s version “absurd and outrageous,” contending that the unarmed victim would not be likely to attack an armed agent.

Cozart, a 22-year veteran of the Border Patrol who took charge in San Diego last January, said he could recall no incidents in which a patrol officer was formally charged with murder in connection with the death of an illegal alien. He noted, however, that there may have been cases of which he was unaware.

The canyon-pocked stretch of border between San Diego County and Tijuana is considered the most heavily trafficked--and the most violent--strip along the entire 1,900-mile international boundary. Teams made up of U.S. Border Patrol agents and San Diego police officers regularly patrol the canyons in search of bandits who often prey on the thousands of undocumented immigrants seeking entry into the United States.

Since Jan. 1, there have been five known shootings involving law enforcement authorities at the border, according to Cozart. The shootings have left two aliens dead and two others injured. One Border Patrol agent was also mistakenly shot by a fellow officer but recovered.