Thursday, March 29, 2007

Video of US-Mexico border shooting appears to back immigrants' story

TUCSON, Arizona: A grainy surveillance video taken as a Border Patrol agent fatally shot an illegal immigrant from Mexico appears to lend credence to the surviving immigrants' accounts of what happened.

The Cochise County attorney released the video clips and documents this week after public records requests by The Associated Press and two newspapers. The shooting has drawn condemnation from the Mexican government and spurred an FBI civil rights investigation.

Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett encountered a group of four immigrants among a larger group of border crossers whom he and other agents were rounding up on Jan. 12 near Naco. The group included three brothers and one man's wife.

Corbett has declined to be interviewed by investigators but told other agents that he came around the front of his SUV, saw a man with a rock in his hand close to the rear of the vehicle and fired when the man moved to throw it.

The witnesses said the agent came from behind the victim, and the video appears to support that version.

No comments: