U.S. Citizen Charged in May Killing of Immigrant Boy : Border violence: The random shooting was one of those recently deplored at a meeting of U.S. and Mexican presidents. The 12-year-old was en route from Mexico to his parents’ apartment in Stanton.

Authorities arrested a laborer Wednesday and charged him with firing the shot that killed a 12-year-old Mexican boy who was gunned down almost seven months ago as he and family members walked along a border hillside en route to his parents’ home in Orange County.

The death of Emilio Jimenez Bejines is one of a number of border-area homicides this year that led the presidents of both Mexico and the United States to condemn the growing violence during a meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, last month.

Charged with first-degree murder in the shooting is Dwight Ray Pannel, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in Imperial Beach and works occasional construction jobs. Pannel was arrested at his home and was being held in lieu of $1 million bail. He was also charged in several robberies and an assault case involving undocumented immigrants who were victimized earlier on the day of the murder for “beer money,” according to court papers.

Shortly before firing the fatal shot, according to a witness quoted in court papers, Pannel said, “Let’s shoot some aliens.” He then fired a .30-caliber hunting rifle toward a hillside where many undocumented immigrants had gathered, the witness told investigators. Pannel fired from the rear balcony of the home of a friend who lives about half a mile north of the international boundary, in an area regularly traversed by migrants headed north.

Luis Aragon, the San Diego deputy district attorney who is prosecuting the case, refrained from calling the shooting a racially linked “hate crime.” The suspect has no known link to organized hate groups, Aragon said.

Emilio was shot about 3:30 p.m. May 18. He died of a single .30-caliber gunshot wound about 1 1/2 hours after he, two siblings and an uncle had crossed the border.

The dead boy’s father, who lives in a Stanton apartment house, is a legal U.S. resident via the amnesty program, but the three youths and the boy’s mother are undocumented, according to family members.

“We’ve suffered enough from this,” the boy’s father, Ernesto Jimenez, said Wednesday. “All we want is justice.”

Enrique Loaeza, the Mexican consul general in San Diego, said the Mexican government was “very satisfied” that the long-pending inquiry finally appeared to be moving forward.

The charges against Pannel represent a major turnaround in the investigation, the result, prosecutors say, of lengthy questioning of witnesses.

Throughout, investigators say, they were convinced that the fatal bullet was fired from the rear balcony of the border-area family home of Leonard Paul Cuen, 21, who was initially arrested as a suspect in the case but was released 10 days later. Ballistics tests have positively identified Cuen’s .30-caliber hunting rifle as the murder weapon, authorities say. Police had said Cuen fired during a day of beer-drinking and target shooting with friends.

However, an affidavit now on file in Superior Court shows that at least three men, including Cuen, fired shots from the balcony on the afternoon of the murder. There is a direct line of fire from the balcony to the site where the boy was felled, about 430 yards to the south, authorities say.

Prosecutors now say Cuen was inside the house taking a shower when the fatal shot was fired. Pannel was on the balcony, and, according to the affidavit, two witnesses who were also on the balcony saw Pannel fire the rifle into the hills about the time of the boy’s death.