Boy Says He Didn’t Throw Rock at Agents : Account by Wounded Mexican Teen Contradicts Border Patrol

A 15-year-old Mexican boy shot Sunday by U.S. Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexican border in San Diego says he never threw a rock or brandished one at the officers. He also maintains that he was shot when he went to the assistance of a man who was being beaten by agents, according to a private attorney and a representative of the Mexican consul general in San Diego.

The attorney, Marco E. Lopez of San Diego, and the consular representative, Marcela Merino, said interviews with the boy Tuesday provided a contradictory version of events than that put forward by the Border Patrol. The teen was interviewed in a hospital.

According to the Border Patrol, an agent, Terry Manning, 34, shot the boy, Pedro Garcia Hernandez, as he was about to hurl a “softball-sized” rock at Manning’s partner. The boy had already thrown at least one stone at an agent, said Michael D. Gregg, a Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego.

But Lopez and Merino said the boy insisted that he was shot without provocation.

Said He Didn’t Throw Rock

“This boy is very firm on the point that he did not hold a rock, and that he did not throw a rock,” said Merino, who heads the citizen protection division of the Mexican consul’s office in San Diego.

The incident might result in a note of protest by the Mexican government, said Merino, the Mexican consular official. She noted that the Mexican consul general, Armando Beteta, met Tuesday with Dale W. Cozart, chief Border Patrol agent in San Diego, and expressed his concern.

“The consul is very preoccupied by this incident,” Merino said. “This was a disproportionate response. A rock does not represent the same kind of threat as a gun.”

Gregg disagreed.

“There’s a misconception out there,” the Border Patrol spokesman said. “A rock, depending on how it is used, can kill and maim just like a gun. We’ve had a lot of agents seriously injured with rocks.”

Patrol Version Called Mistaken

Lopez, who has represented a number of Border Patrol shooting victims in federal lawsuits against the government, said the patrol’s version of events was mistaken.

The boy “never threw or held a rock; he motioned to the officers and that was it,” said Lopez, who plans a civil claim. “This is one of the most outrageous cases we’ve ever seen.”

Lopez said that, after shooting the boy, agents threw him to the ground, one placed a knee on his chest, and several began shouting at him. “Three or four agents were screaming at him, telling him he was going to die,” Lopez said.

According to Lopez and Merino, the boy went to the assistance of an 18-year-old acquaintance, Arturo Garcia Beltran, who was being beaten by three Border Patrol agents. Border Patrol officials deny any such beating. The boy said he simply gestured in the direction of the agents, who were “pummeling” his acquaintance, Lopez said.

Both the 15-year-old shooting victim and the 18-year-old face charges of assaulting a federal officer, U.S. authorities say.

Preliminary Inquiry

San Diego police are investigating the shooting, as is standard in such cases. A preliminary inquiry by the Border Patrol indicated that the use of potentially lethal force was justified, said Gregg, the Border Patrol spokesman.

The incident occurred less than two hours after three U.S. journalists, including a Times reporter, witnessed an incident in which a Border Patrol agent used his vehicle’s public address system to taunt hundreds of migrants waiting along the border. It was not known if the boy or his companion had heard the earlier taunting by the Border Patrol.

The shooting also took place one week after a Border Patrol vehicle ran over and killed a 14-year-old Mexican boy who was crossing the border illegally. U.S. authorities say that incident was an unfortunate accident. An attorney representing the boy’s family has characterized it as negligence.

The victim of Sunday’s shooting, a native of the southern state of Oaxaca, is an impoverished orphan who had lived in Tijuana for four months, residing most recently in an abandoned car near the border, according to the consul and to Lopez.

Recently, he had earned his living by selling chewing gum along the river levees where the migrants cross into the United States, they said. On the night of the shooting, they added, he was not attempting to enter the United States but was just walking in the area.

The incident is the latest of a series in which Border Patrol agents have shot Mexican citizens allegedly brandishing rocks in the border area. Rights groups have protested the shootings as overreactions, but officials have defended the response as appropriate self-defense.