Trying to Dissect the Truth

A young Mexican kid is shot and killed at the border near El Paso. What is the truth? From the Wall Street Journal we get two sides.

Here is one side:

According to two witnesses on the bridge, the victim was part of a group of teens who had sidestepped border checkpoints on the Santa Fe Bridge—which is flanked by border checkpoints on either side—and entered the U.S. on foot, crossing a dry aqueduct and an old railroad beside the bridge. None were carrying backpacks or appeared to have weapons, the two witnesses said.

The teens were playing a kind of "cat-and-mouse game," said Bobbie McDow, 52, a U.S. national who said she witnessed the shooting from the middle of the bridge where she was standing. The teenagers, Ms. McDow said, appeared to be trying to make it to the U.S. side and quickly back to Mexico without being caught by officials, a pattern that Ms. McDow said she has noticed.

Ms. McDow said that U.S. border agents spotted the teenagers and gave chase. One teen stumbled and was caught, and another was pinned down by an agent who had chased him by bicycle, she said. While holding down one of the Mexican boys, this agent fired shots toward Mexico.

One of the youths—not the young Mr. Hernández—had thrown rocks at the border patrol agents, Ms. McDow said, but she stressed that the agent's "life wasn't under threat."

Ms. McDow's husband, Raul Flores, 52, a Mexican national, also said he witnessed the incident. Mr. Flores said the teenager who was shot had stepped out from behind a pillar on the Mexican side of the border with his hands in the air. The agent and the teenager "had four seconds to look at each other" before the young man was shot, first in the shoulder and then in the head, he said.

From the Border patrol agents we get another version:

The FBI's account differed. It said border patrol agents responded to "a group of suspected illegal aliens being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico." It said one suspect, Oscar Ivan Piñeda Ayala, was first detained. Another agent, arriving on his bicycle, detained a second, Augustin Alcaraz Reyes. Others in the group ran toward the Mexican border and began to throw rocks at the agent, the agency said.

The second agent told the others to "halt and retreat." However, they surrounded the agent and continued to throw rocks at him, the FBI said. The agent then fired his gun "several times," striking one person it didn't identify.

The FBI said the zone where this incident occurred is a known high-risk crime area where rocks are regularly thrown at border patrol agents and where other assaults have been reported.

The real truth will be never known, but from my experience with these kinds of stories, you have to do a Solomonic judgement and slice down the middle. The kids were not "innocent". Throwing rocks at armed police is a very dangerous game. The police were not innocent. There are too many cases of "shoot first" and ask questions later. Plus, if you are the police and somebody is throwing rocks which can cause serious injuries, you aren't just going to let yourself be a dummy target. You will fight back. A responsible cop would shoot to injure. A bad cop would shoot to kill. It looks to me this is a case of a border patrol agent who let his anger overcome him and he slipped over to the dark side and became a bad cop.

The "solution" will require all sides to accept responsibility and act to diffuse the situation. Blaming the other side and claiming your side is "lily white and pure" just won't do. Sadly, my experience says that this reasonable approach won't be taken. Both sides will dig in and blame the other.

The Mexican authorities need to patrol their side and do an educational campaign to warn kids that they are playing a deadly game when they throw rocks and they should expect to be killed. The US side needs to educate its officers that they have a right to defend themselves, but no right to use deadly force (which I interpret to mean they can shoot to wing/incapacitate, but not to kill). The US authorities need to try and find a non-lethal device for their agents. But as the Wall Street Journal article points out, even when they used a stun weapon earlier that week, they killed a Mexican national. So-called "non-lethal" weapons are all too often lethal.

Bottom line: there are no easy answers. All sides need to climb down and seriously try to diffuse the situation.