US federal agents say a Mexican man they shot dead at a border patrol station in Texas this week advanced on them while wielding an “edged weapon” – reported to have been a pair of scissors.
Border patrol agents shot Manuel González Morán, 33, in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday. They had detained him for allegedly re-entering the US without permission. He died after being taken to hospital.
A statement from the FBI said agents tried to stop González by shocking him with a stun gun, after he charged out of a holding cell. The FBI said agents eventually shot González dead after he grabbed “an edged weapon” and approached them.
The FBI did not specify how many agents shot González, whether any had been removed from regular duties while the case was investigated or what kind of “edged weapon” the man killed allegedly had.
Citing documents it said it obtained and verified, Vice World News reported that González – a native of nearby Ciudad Juárez – grabbed a pair of scissors and threatened officials.
Vice also reported that González was being detained in a holding cell with about 20 other migrants when an agent opened the door to process him and he ran out, heading for an office area where the scissors were.
Vice said agents shot González “at point-blank range” when the stun gun didn’t stop him. One bullet grazed González’s left arm. A second struck González in the temple, mortally wounding him, Vice reported.
The FBI noted that González was killed months after his release on parole from an 11-year prison sentence in Colorado, a punishment that also required deportation to Mexico. González was convicted in 2011 in Pueblo, Colorado, of assault with a deadly weapon resulting in serious bodily injury, the FBI added.
Despite the bureau’s statement, commentators in some quarters expressed concern about the level of force being used against some of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who officials say have been crossing into the US from the southern border.
A week before González’s killing, American twin brothers – one the warden of a privately operated jail which previously housed detained migrants – shot two Mexicans near the border in rural Hudspeth county, about 90 miles from El Paso.
Jesús Iván Sepúlveda Martínez, 22, was struck in the head and killed. A woman accompanying him was hit in the stomach and wounded.
Authorities have charged Michael Sheppard – who was fired from his job as the warden of the West Texas detention center – and his brother, Mark Sheppard, with manslaughter.
The brothers purportedly claimed to investigators that they were hunting and mistook the migrants for animals. Witnesses alleged the Sheppards addressed derogatory words to the migrants before opening fire.
The jail Michael Sheppard ran before his dismissal was the subject of multiple allegations of abuse – physical and verbal – against detained African migrants. Authorities struggled to follow up those claims because many of those interviewed were deported, a co-author of a 2018 report detailing the abuse allegations said.
The US federal agency which administers detained migrants stopped sending detainees to the West Texas detention facility in 2019, after a larger lockup opened relatively close by, officials said.
