Border Crime Force Shoots and Kills Man Brandishing Toy Gun

Members of the Border Crime Prevention Unit shot and killed a man early Monday after he allegedly jumped from a bush north of the border, pointed what appeared to be a rifle and shouted “Don’t move!” in Spanish.

Police declined to identify the man, who died of multiple gunshot wounds, but said he was holding a plastic toy rifle when he was killed.

“Anyone who points a plastic rifle at an officer is committing suicide,” San Diego police spokesman Bill Robinson said.

The dead man was described by a San Diego County deputy coroner as a Latino in his 20s or 30s, weighing 125 pounds and having brown hair and brown eyes. He was wearing a black jacket, white tennis shoes and a key chain with a rabbit’s foot.

The unidentified man was the fourth person to die this year in shoot-outs with the border task force, said Border Patrol spokesman Dana Cunningham. Two men were shot and killed by agents in late January, and another was killed in a shooting in March, said Cunningham.

Shortly After Midnight

Monday’s shooting occurred about 12:40 a.m. Monday, when five members of the border task force approached two men at the south levee of the Tijuana River, just east of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, said Robinson.

As the talked to the men, a third man jumped from a bush and pointed what officers thought was a real gun, Robinson said.

According to Cunningham, the agents said in their initial report Monday that the man brandished what appeared to be an M-16 weapon, loaded a magazine into the gun and made a threat to the officers. The original report said nothing about a plastic gun, he said.

In an account given later in the day by Robinson, no mention was made about the victim’s loading a magazine into the gun. Robinson said the weapon held by the man turned out to be a toy.

The police officers fired “several” shots at the man, Robinson said. A deputy coroner said the man died of multiple gunshot wounds.

The names of the task force members involved in the shooting were not disclosed. Their sergeant, Ralph Garcia, was not available for comment.

The Border Crime Prevention Unit is a task force composed of officers from the San Diego Police Department and the U. S. Border Patrol who routinely comb the rugged canyons on the border, searching for bandits that prey on illegal aliens.

‘Unusually Vicious’

The job of the task force is to prevent crime along the border--not to apprehend illegal aliens from crossing to San Diego, Cunningham said.

“There are hundreds of people in the hills out there, and in and among those hundreds of people are bandits, and they can be seen plying their trade night after night,” Cunningham said.

“The bandits are unusually vicious,” said Cunningham, who was involved in the January shooting as a task force member. “It would not be out of the ordinary for a group of bandits to walk up to a group of aliens and, without saying anything at all, shooting or stabbing one of the aliens just to get their attention.”

Asked if it is possible for agents to discern whether an attacker is holding a real or plastic gun, Cunningham said:

“When someone is standing a few feet from you, and they make a demand of you, they say ‘Get down’ and ‘Stick ‘em up,’ and they start pulling something from their pocket or their waistband . . . you have no way of knowing whether it is plastic or real. You have to assume it is real.”

Several times in the last few years, officers have killed suspects who were carrying items mistaken for guns.

In December, task force members killed two suspected bandits after one of them pulled what turned out to be a toy gun on the officers.

A year earlier, in December, 1986, task force members shot and killed a man who confronted them and pulled what appeared to be a gun when the unit was patrolling in Spring Canyon. The object turned out to be a large screwdriver.

In May, 1986, they killed a man who reportedly yelled, “Stop and get down!” while pointing two tree branches covered with cloth.