Border Agent Reportedly Told of Body : Killing: Prosecutor says the officer considered returning to dispose of the victim’s remains.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of first-degree murder in the killing of a Mexican man shot the fleeing victim in the back and talked about disposing of the body clandestinely, a prosecutor said Thursday.

“Yes, the victim was running away when he was shot,” said Jose Luis Machado, the prosecuting attorney for Santa Cruz County where the death occurred.

The agent, Michael Andrew Elmer--the first Border Patrol officer in memory to be charged with murder--talked to another agent about going back to the isolated canyon where the killing occurred to somehow conceal the incident, Machado said in an interview.

“The defendant contemplated, or intended, to go back and remove the body and dispose of it,” said Machado, who would provide no additional details of how the agent planned to carry out the cover-up.

The prosecutor said Elmer confided the cover-up plan to at least one other Border Patrol agent, as yet unidentified, who eventually reported the killing to his superiors--15 1/2 hours after the shooting occurred. Agents were sent to the scene and discovered the body.

Machado said the agent who reported the shooting was motivated by remorse and fear of becoming involved in criminal activity.

The victim, Dario Miranda Valenzuela, a 26-year-old laborer from neighboring Nogales, Mexico, died at the scene after being shot about 7 p.m. on the evening of June 12. No medical aid was summoned, sheriff’s deputies say, and attorneys for the dead man’s family have raised the possibility that he may have been left to die. Final autopsy results are pending.

Five Border Patrol agents, including Elmer, were in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, conducting surveillance on suspected drug traffickers in Mariposa Canyon, about seven miles west of this border town, authorities say. None of Elmer’s fellow agents admit witnessing the shooting, Machado said, and all five left after the shooting.

No drugs were found near the scene, authorities said, though the zone is a well-trodden byway for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants. Agents call the area “the combat zone,” according to Michael Piccarreta, a Tucson attorney who represents Elmer and says the agent is innocent.

Elmer, 29, a Border Patrol officer for 3 1/2 years and a National Guard veteran of last year’s Gulf War, was arrested the day after the shooting and has been held in County Jail since. Justice of the Peace Eugene Murphy denied his request to set bail Thursday, noting that Elmer--brought into the court in ankle shackles--could face the death penalty.

Members of the Elmer and Valenzuela families--including the slain man’s widow, Margarita Tello de Miranda, a mother of children ages 4 and 2--attended the hourlong hearing amid tight security.

The Border Patrol agent who reported the shooting to superiors has been placed on administrative leave, a source said.

The status of the other three officers who were in the vicinity could not be determined. A Border Patrol spokesman, Stephen R. McDonald, refused to provide their names or disclose whether they remain on the job. Only Elmer has been charged.

Along with the criminal investigation by Santa Cruz County authorities, officials from the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general’s office are conducting an internal inquiry into the agents’ actions.

Prosecutors say they are confident that Elmer fired both shots that killed Valenzuela, apparently using a high-powered rifle. Authorities have seized two rifles: an M-16 and an AR-15.

Two other illegal immigrants were accompanying Valenzuela the night he was shot, said Jesus R. Romo Vejar, a Tucson attorney representing the dead man’s family. Neither witnessed the shooting, according to the lawyer, but both heard shots.

One of the other immigrants, Eduardo Torres Berber, the victim’s brother-in-law, said an uniformed officer threatened to kill him and fired from about 10 yards, but missed, Romo said. The two men fled unhurt back to Mexico, the attorney said.