Border Slaying Found Justifiable : Police: Two San Diego officers are cleared in the slaying of a man who was robbing illegal immigrants.

The district attorney’s office has cleared two San Diego police officers in the killing of a 22-year-old man and wounding of a 16-year-old youth in a shooting that occurred during a robbery of illegal immigrants near the Mexican border, authorities said Friday.

Sgt. Robert Kanaski and Officer Jaime Conti were legally justified in fatally shooting Roquelio Pesquiera Varela Jr. on Jan. 30 because the robber pointed what police thought was a fully functional M-16 assault rifle at Conti during a robbery after officers had identified themselves as police, said Bill Collins, the deputy district attorney who investigated the case.

Varela, of Imperial Beach, was wounded five times and died at the scene, a brush-covered ravine about a quarter of a mile southwest of Dairy Mart Road and Servando Avenue. A 16-year-old youth who was an accomplice in the robbery suffered a minor injury when he was struck in the right calf by a stray bullet, Collins said.

Varela and the youth were part of a robbery ring of U.S. residents that preyed on illegal immigrants, and the shooting occurred while the thieves were trying to rob a group of Mexican men who had crossed the border, said Lt. Dan Berglund of the San Diego Police Department.

Kanaski, 35, and Conti, 30, were among 10 members of the Police Department’s border crime intervention detail who were conducting a surveillance that night on the north bank of the Tijuana River near Dairy Mart Road, where a number of robberies of illegal immigrants had been reported, Kanaski said.

Kanaski, a 12-year-veteran, said Friday that it was his first night back to the unit after spending three months away. “We were just intelligence-gathering, trying to find out where the robberies were; we weren’t necessarily ready for what happened,” Kanaski said.

Conti, a six-year veteran, had found an eight-member group of illegal immigrants who were going to meet their guide, Kanaski said. He and Conti wanted to meet the guide, so they joined the group and followed from about 20 feet behind, Kanaski said.

The eight-member group of illegal immigrants had just crossed a rise when they were confronted by nine men claiming to be police officers, Kanaski said.

According to a report from the district attorney’s office, “Officer Conti said he heard someone say, ‘Police. Get down. Police.’ and thought that the Border Patrol had stopped them.”

Kanaski recalls that both he and Conti were afraid to get into a confrontation with Border Patrol agents who might have fired on them when they saw that they were armed.

Kanaski was armed with a Sig-Sauer P-226 9-millimeter automatic pistol and Conti had a Ruger P-85 9-millimeter automatic pistol.

During the attack on the immigrants, Varela, carrying a deactivated M-16 rifle, started walking toward the police officers with the weapon at his side, police said.

Kanaski said he yelled “police officer” and Conti reportedly said “police” in Spanish and English. They were standing about 12 yards from the victim, both men were wearing police uniforms and the lighting from the moon that night was excellent, said Lt. Berglund, who was at the scene later.

When Varela reportedly brought the rifle up and pointed it at Conti, both officers fired. Conti, who was later questioned, said he was sure the victim had seen him.

According to criminalist Kevin Brown, the M-16, which was recovered at the scene of the shooting, had been deactivated, coated and filled with a rubber substance and was incapable of firing. The rifle had been used for training by the San Diego State University Reserve Officer Training Corps until it was stolen from an ROTC member sometime before the shooting.

At the time of the shooting, however, both officers said they assumed it was a working M-16. “We’re both in SWAT, so we both knew the capabilities of it when we saw it,” Kanaski said.

Collins, who prepared the final report that cleared the two police officers, said: “You’ve got to understand that, if I’m a cop, and there’s a robbery in progress, and someone points what looks like an M-16 to me, I’m not going to stop and ask, ‘Excuse me, is that an M-16?’ ”

Both officers fired four times and a stray bullet also hit the 16-year-old youth nearby who was part of the robbery gang, Berglund said.

Valera’s 17-year-old brother, who was also part of the nine-member robbery group, demonstrated for detectives on videotape that he saw his brother turn and bring the rifle up at the police officers, Collins said.

The eight illegal immigrants also testified at a preliminary hearing on videotape that they had heard shouts of “police” while they were on the ground, Collins said. None of them, however, were able to see if Valera did point the rifle at Conti, he added.

When the shooting broke out, the robbery gang tried to flee, but they were caught by police who came to Kanaski and Conti’s assistance. One youth escaped, but he was later arrested at his Imperial Beach home.

All but one admitted that they had been planning to rob illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.