And still another gun fight on the border.!!!
Gunfight on the Rio Grande
By Karen Gleason
The News-Herald
Published January 16, 2003
A gun battle erupted Tuesday night beside the Rio Grande between U.S. Border Patrol agents and a group of suspected marijuana smugglers.
No Border Patrol agents were injured, two persons were detained and a large cache of suspected marijuana was found.
The U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector Wednesday released a statement about the exchange of gunfire.
“About (7:50 p.m.) Tuesday, agents were on a Still Watch operation in the Vega Verde area. The agents saw several persons crossing the Rio Grande into the United States carrying large packages. The agents identified themselves as Border Patrol agents, and they started receiving gunfire. The agents returned fire and took cover. No agents were injured,†said Dennis Smith, public affairs officer for the Del Rio Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Though several sources Wednesday said they believed the gunfight’s instigators escaped unscathed as well, no official confirmation of that fact had been made as of press time this morning.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday no federal charges have been filed against the two persons being held in connection with the shooting. The spokesman added it was his understanding that the prosecution of the case would be turned over to the state.
Recovered at the scene of the gun battle were stacks of heavily wrapped packages, almost certainly marijuana. The total weight of the packages is estimated at close to 1,000 pounds. Whatever is inside the tightly wrapped and corded bundles, its former owners apparently considered it valuable enough to kill for.
One river resident said he heard the gun battle as soon as it started.
“It sounded like World War Three,†said Tommy Vick. “I was inside with all the doors and windows shut, and I could still hear it loud and clear. It lit the place up like a Christmas tree.â€
Vick, who lives several lots away from the site of the shootings, is a longtime resident of the “Vega Verde,†literally, the “Green Plain.†It is what locals call that narrow strip of real estate that borders the Rio Grande. On the U.S. side of the river, a line of homes has been built along a winding, badly potholed ribbon of asphalt that parallels the river for several miles.
While the Vega’s isolation makes it an ideal locale in which to experience country living, that same isolation has also made the area a breeding ground for much trouble over the years.
Criminals and delinquents have found it easy, over the years, to cross the Rio Grande into the United States to steal from the residents of the Vega. In 2000, one of the residents, Patrick Bordelon, shot and wounded one Mexican youth and shot and killed a second. Residents of the Vega defended Bordelon’s violence, but the case was prosecuted successfully, and Bordelon went to prison.
Residents also claim they have, in the past, exchanged gunfire with people on the Mexico side of the river.
But Smith said Wednesday such exchanges of gunfire involving Border Patrol agents are rare.
Special Agent Rene Salinas, media coordinator for the San Antonio office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Wednesday the FBI is investigating the case because it involves an assault on federal officers. Salinas declined further comment because the case is considered an ongoing investigation.
Early Wednesday morning, FBI agents began processing the scene of the gunfight. They took measurements, fingerprints, notes, photographs, digital video recordings. Dozens of small orange flags, like the kind sometimes used to mark buried utilities, dotted the backyard of the residence where the gunfight broke out and the backyard of the home next door. The orange flags pinpointed locations where spent shell casings were found.
Members of the Border Patrol’s special response team secured the grounds of the residence. Cradling black military rifles, they looked like they meant business and their welcome was as chill as the winter wind that ruffled the surface of the river, flowing gray as pewter in the background.
A large, drab two-story house squats on the lot. A four-foot-high chain link fence surrounds three sides of the unkempt yard, which dips toward the river behind the house. Between the backyard and the river stands a tall, natural fence of winter-brown carrizo, river cane.
Several cars are parked in the backyard. A black one, parked closest to the river, is riddled with bullet holes, including two through its windshield. Near the two cars lies a deflated gray raft, one of several used to ferry the marijuana across the river.
Across the river, a rolling series of limestone bluffs dotted with cactus and ceniza rises over a strip of riparian woods and more stands of carrizo. It’s a scene that could have come straight from a movie about the Wild West, and it doesn’t take much to imagine it as a smuggler’s staging ground.
A Border Patrol agent clad head-to-toe in olive drab green stands near the site of the shooting and scans the opposite riverbank through binoculars. His mouth is set in a thin, tight line.
On the opposite bank, nothing stirs.
For now.
