Video: US Border Agents Fire on Rock-Throwers on Rio Grande Jason Buch - San Antonio Express-News
go to original September 8, 2012

In photo, Nora Isabel Lam Gallegos, 26, cries, Friday Sept. 7, 2012 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamalipas, Mexico, at the scene where her husband Guillermo Arevalo Pedroza, 36, was allegedly shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent Monday Sept. 3, 2012 on the Rio Grande. (Edward A. Ornelas / San Antonio Express-News) This video surfaced on Friday depicting the moments after the victim was shot on Monday. (Rubios Noticias)

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — Guillermo Arévalo Pedroza was on the bank of the Rio Grande with his youngest daughter when the bullets started flying Monday night, his wife said. After he was hit, the 9-year-old girl wrapped her arms around him.

Nora Isabel Lam Gallegos, 26, said she, Arévalo, a 36-year-old construction worker, and their daughters Mariana and Priscilla, 10, had gone to a park on the river for a birthday celebration. She and her daughters' birthdays fall close together, and they were having a barbecue, Lam said.

Around dusk, a Border Patrol boat appeared near the Parque Vivero, across the river from an undeveloped stretch of land in south Laredo, she said.

The two agents on board were trying to stop a young man who was swimming from the U.S. to Mexico, not an unusual occurrence on this busy stretch of the border.

On the Mexican side of the river, Lam and another witness said, partygoers in the crowded park began heckling the agents and telling them they were going to drown the swimmer.

Then the shooting erupted.

“Everything was covered in blood,” Lam said through tears. “He was already dead. So I started screaming ‘They killed him, they killed him, they have killed him' (The agents) heard that I said that they had killed him, and they left.”

In a statement, the Border Patrol said its agents came under attack from rock throwers on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, and said investigation has been turned over to the FBI.

Read more at The San Antonio Express-News

jbuch@express-news.net

The Laredo Morning Times contributed to this report.

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