Tucson Region

Agent who fired wasn't threatened

Criminal investigators have determined that a U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot and killed a drug backpacker last Saturday was not being threatened at the time, officials with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department said Friday. The agent, though, may not have known he had shot somebody, said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada. The dead man, Julio Cesar Yenez Ramirez, 31, from Nogales, Sonora, was shot through the right arm and the bullet pierced his heart and lung, exiting through the left armpit, Estrada said. He said Yenez Ramirez had been picked up by Border Patrol agents and deported six times previously. Estrada gave this account of the shooting: Three agents closed in on a group of 12 men carrying about 300 pounds of marijuana at 4 a.m. Saturday. The agents approached from different angles and one, the shooter, spooked the group, which scattered, dropping six packs of marijuana. "At that point, for reasons we still need to clarify, the agent fired one round," Estrada said. As the other two agents came up, they reported, they heard Yenez Ramirez moaning on the ground. He died at the scene. It appears that the agent didn't know he had shot the man, though he was wearing night-vision goggles, Estrada said. "He was not being shot at, he was not being attacked." If investigators conclude there was a wrongful death, the case will be turned over to the County Attorney's Office for possible prosecution, he said. The agent has returned to normal patrol duties, said Rob Daniels, spokesman for the agency's Tucson sector.