El Imparcial is reporting that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot at a group of people who were throwing rocks at agents while they responded to a report of drug smugglers at about11:30 p.m. Wednesday.
According to Border Patrol spokesman Shelton McKenzie, “Preliminary reports indicate that the agents observed the smugglers drop a narcotics load on the U.S. side of the international boundary and flee back to Mexico. Subjects at the scene then began assaulting the agents with rocks. After verbal commands from agents to cease were ignored, one agent then discharged his service firearm. One of the subjects appeared to have been hit.”
The Sonora State Investigative Police, or PEI, said 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez of Nogales, Sonora was found dead of gunshot wounds on the sidewalk on the south side of Calle Internacional, which faces the border fence on the west side of town.
According to the Nogales International, reporter Cesar Barron on Radio XENY of Nogales, Sonora, said that an eyewitness, claimed two males were climbing on the border fence, apparently on their way back from the U.S. side, when the Border Patrol agents arrived.
“According to the witness, the agents told the suspects that they were going to be arrested, and that they were better off behind bars in the United States than in Mexico. The suspects reportedly responded with an obscenity.
At that point, four more males arrived on the Mexican side and began to throw rocks toward the fence in an apparent effort to help the two suspects escape. That’s when an agent began firing, the witness told Barron.”
Some of the bullets reportedly struck the walls of a medical office behind Rodríguez. Luis Contreras Sánchez, the physician who operates the office.” Various news outlets report that between five and 12 shots were fired.