Report: Teen hit from behind in Border Patrol shooting

Bob Ortega, The Arizona Republic | The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX -- An autopsy report raises new questions about the death of a Mexican youth shot by at least one U.S. Border Patrol officer four months ago in Nogales.

The Border Patrol has maintained that Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, was throwing rocks over the border fence at agents on the U.S. side when an agent fired across the international border the night of Oct. 10.

But entry and exit wounds suggest that all but one of as many as 11 bullets that struck the boy entered from behind, according to the report by two medical examiners working for the Sonora attorney general's office. Those bullets also entered the boy's body at a lower point on his frame than they exited, the report found.

"The only way I can fathom that report is that he was lying on his face when he was hit," said Luis Parra, an attorney representing the Elena Rodriguez family.

Border Patrol spokesman Vic Brabble declined to comment on the autopsy report, citing an ongoing FBI investigation. The FBI also declined to comment.

Gregory Hess, the Pima County medical examiner, said after reviewing the report that the trajectories it describes could be consistent with someone being shot and falling, with subsequent shots hitting the prone body. But he said that there could be other interpretations, and that without seeing photographs, and without knowing the examiners or the quality of their work, he couldn't draw any conclusions.

Absalon Madrigal Godinez, the lead examiner, hadn't replied by deadline to email requests for an interview.

Parra, reached by phone in Hermosillo, Sonora, where he was seeking ballistics reports, said that Elena Rodriguez's family feels frustrated "because it seems like there hasn't been any collaboration at all between U.S. and Mexican authorities on this."

Nineteen people have been killed by Border Patrol agents since January 2010, with all but two of those deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border. Elena Rodriguez's death led Mexican officials to question whether Border Patrol agents were too quick to use deadly force.

The Department of Homeland Security, of which the Border Patrol is a part, has said it is reviewing the patrol's use-of-force policies. The current policy treats rocks as potentially lethal, and allows agents to fire at rock-throwers if they perceive a threat to their lives or the lives of others.

In this incident, agents were chasing two men they believed had carried bundles of drugs over the fence and were trying to escape back into Mexico. As the men climbed the fence, rocks were hurled at police and Border Patrol agents, according to police reports. That's when an agent standing near the fence opened fire, the reports said.

At the spot where Elena Rodriguez's body was found, the border fence runs along a bluff. The bottom of the fence is about 25 feet above street level, where the boy would have been standing. The top of the fence is another 18 feet above that.

According to Nogales police, whoever was throwing rocks was flinging them over the fence, not through the 3.5 inch gaps between the metal poles. Given the arc that a rock would have to travel to pass over the fence from the street below, it would be nearly impossible for the projectile to hit someone right next to the fence, where the agent would have had to have stood to fire down at the youth through the fence's metal bars.

In addition to the bullets that struck Elena Rodriguez, police investigators marked holes from 11 bullets on the walls of a medical office behind where the boy's body was found, with some holes 9 or 10 feet off the ground.

According to Hess, it's unlikely Elena Rodriguez would have been struck by ricochets, because ricochet entry wounds are readily identifiable, and would have been noted in the report.