2 Border Agents, Suspect in Slayings Killed in Texas

A man fatally shot a mother and daughter in a predawn attack at their home Tuesday, then ambushed a group of law officers searching for him, killing two Border Patrol agents.

The slayings of agents Susan Lynn Rodriguez, 28, and Ricardo Guillermo Salinas, 24, brought to four the number of federal Border Patrol agents killed on the job this year. Rodriguez is the first woman Border Patrol agent to die in the line of duty.

The gunman, Ernest Moore, 25, was shot four times in the shootout and was hospitalized, where he later died, hospital spokesman Mike Swartz said.

Police in the Harlingen suburb of Rio Hondo received a 911 call of shots fired at a house at about 5:30 a.m. An officer found 53-year-old Margarita Flores and her daughter, Delia Morin, 31, shot to death in a hallway in their home. Flores’ son, Dan Morin, 22, was critically wounded.

Rio Hondo Police Chief Carlos Gonzalez said Moore went to the house looking for a former girlfriend who was a guest there. The woman, whose name was not released, was home at the time of the shooting but not injured.

Moore, the son of a Harlingen police detective, fled in a pickup, which was spotted later near the Moore family home, about 10 miles away near San Benito.

A group of officers, including three Border Patrol agents who joined the pursuit after local authorities requested help, went to Moore’s home to talk with his parents. When the officers were getting ready to leave, Moore emerged from a nearby cornfield and opened fire with an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle.