* Border patrol agent opened fire on rock throwers
* Second fatal shooting of Nogales teen in two years
By Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY, Oct 15 (Reuters) – The family of a Mexican teen
shot dead when the U.S. Border Patrol opened fire on a group of
rock throwers in Mexico last week is planning to bring a lawsuit
alleging excessive use of force, Mexican authorities said on
Monday.
The Border Patrol said an agent in Nogales, Arizona, opened
fire across the border into Mexico late last Wednesday night.
Mexican authorities said 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena
Rodriguez was shot dead in the incident.
A lawyer for Mexico’s Public Ministry in Nogales said
attorneys for Elena Rodriguez’ family would lodge a civil suit
against the Border Patrol in the United States seeking
unspecified damages for excessive use of force with fatal
consequences.
“They are not specifying an amount, but it will be based on
the boy’s age … and the earnings he will not receive,” Manuel
Iniguez Lopez told Reuters. He gave no indication of when the
lawsuit would be filed.
Iniguez said the legal action would also push for punishment
for the Border Patrol agent or agents responsible for the death
of Elena Rodriguez, who was shot seven times in the back.
The incident began shortly before midnight on Wednesday when
Border Patrol agents responded to reports of two suspected
smugglers in Nogales and watched as they dropped drugs on the
Arizona side of the border.
The smugglers then fled back across the border into Mexico
and “began assaulting the agents with rocks,” the Border Patrol
said in a written statement. An unnamed agent opened fire after
the suspects refused orders to stop, the patrol said.
The Border Patrol on Monday declined to comment, saying the
agency did not have anything to add to the original statement it
made last week.
Manuel Johnson, a spokesman in Phoenix for the FBI – which
is investigating the shooting – declined to comment, saying the
probe is on-going. Calls to two attorneys representing the Elena
Rodriguez family in the United States were not immediately
returned on Monday.
Elena Rodriguez was the second Mexican teenager shot dead
by the Border Patrol in the Mexican border city in less than two
years. In January 2011, an agent fired into Mexico, killing
17-year-old Ramses Barron of Nogales.
News pictures taken shortly after the shooting showed Elena
Rodriguez’ apparently lifeless body lying face down on the
sidewalk a few yards south of the border fence, which consists
of parallel steel barriers.
The shooting brought sharp criticism from Mexico’s Foreign
Ministry, which said the initial report “creates serious, new
doubts about the use of lethal force by U.S. Border Patrol
agents, something that both the Mexican government and society
strongly deplore and condemn.
“It is imperative that the relevant U.S. authorities proceed
with a timely and transparent investigation, and take it to its
ultimate consequences,” the ministry said in a statement.
The teenager’s shooting came more than a week after a Border
Patrol agent was shot and killed near the U.S.-Mexico border in
an apparent friendly fire incident.
Nicholas Ivie, 30, was responding to a tripped sensor near
Naco, Arizona, in an area well-known for smuggling activities.
Another agent was shot and wounded, and a third agent was
unharmed.
(Additional reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; editing by
Todd Eastham; Writing by Tim Gaynor)
