An American man was killed when a Mexican police officer opened fire on the car he was driving in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, Mexican authorities said Monday.
A district attorney for the state of Chihuahua, Carlos Manuel Salas, said the shooting occurred Sunday when the officer was accompanying a prosecutor’s official who was executing a warrant. The two were on foot when a Mustang with New Mexico license plates suddenly accelerated in their direction, according to Salas, who said the officer began shooting when the driver tried to flee.
Salas said the officer was in custody and that the shooting, recorded on video by a passenger in the car, would be investigated by the state prosecutor’s internal affairs division. At a news conference, Salas called the incident “regrettable” and urged the public to refrain from drawing conclusions until the investigation was concluded.
However, Salas appeared to offer a defense of the prosecutor, whose name was not released. According to Salas, the vehicle was traveling at high speed and skidded as it approached the officer, nearly running him over. The driver was wearing a hood, he said.
“Why are you hitting at that speed?” he asked.
Salas argued that if something similar happened in another country, including the United States, police would also likely respond with force.
Authorities did not identify the man who died, describing him only as a nursing assistant from El Paso. However, Mexican media reported that his name was Julian Alfredo Rodriguez Medina. Media outlets said the man and at least one of the two passengers in the car had relatives who lived nearby.
In an interview with the media outlet El Diario, a man who identified himself as the driver’s brother, and who said he had been in the car, asked state authorities to press charges against the officer.
The man, who identified himself only as Jorge A. R., said he and the other men in the car had gone out to get something to eat when they were shot. He said they had not posed any threat and were a considerable distance from the officer when he began shooting.
“At no time did we make threats to him, nor did we yell at him, nor did we skid the car,” the man said, according to El Diario.
Salas said the shooting had been reported to U.S. authorities in accordance with protocol. A U.S. embassy spokesman said in a statement that officials were “closely following the investigation by local authorities into the reported murder.”
The incident is the latest in a series of violent deaths of Americans in Mexico.
Last week, a 62-year-old man from Rockford, Illinois, was shot in the state of Zacatecas at a roadblock that his family said was operated by a criminal organization. Days earlier, two U.S. citizens and a Mexican citizen were shot dead in the state of Durango in an ambush that also left an American teenager seriously wounded.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged to curb the violence that has plagued much of the country. While authorities often point to fights between drug cartels as the cause of the bloodshed, experts say violence involving police is also not uncommon.
Sunday’s shooting sparked heated debate after video recorded by the passenger was posted on social media. Many called for harsh consequences for the detained officer, and some commentators issued death threats.
On Monday, authorities announced an arrest related to the Durango shooting on Dec. 27. They identified the suspect as Iram Uranga Armendariz, and said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over a debt related to a land deal.
Uranga has been accused of shooting two of the men in the head, then the other two — including the teenager — in the back as they tried to flee on foot. The teen, Jason Pena, 14, of Chicago, was reported to be in critical condition at a Houston hospital Monday.
Source: nytimes
