The FBI agent who shot and killed a kidnapping victim he was trying to rescue last year from a Houston house will not face federal charges, Department of Justice officials said this week, leaving the potential for any criminal charges to come at the local level.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, which was investigating the shooting death last year of Ulises Valladares, “declined to proceed with federal criminal charges against FBI personnel,” a spokesman for the agency said in an email.

The decision, which the agency reached in May but never publicly announced, came “after a careful and thorough review of all of the available evidence in the matter involving the shooting, ” wrote DOJ spokesman Daryl Fields. “We conducted an approximate 11-month-long, detailed and careful investigation.”

It’s not clear whether the FBI took any internal actions against the agent, but the bureau almost never disciplines its agents after they shoot people. A 2013 New York Times investigation found that between 1993 to early 2011, every one of the 150 shootings was deemed justified.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said Wednesday she will present the case to a local grand jury, which will determine if the still unnamed agent should face charges.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Kidnapping victim's family sues FBI

Valladares was shot the day after two armed kidnappers burst into his Conroe home, bound his 12-year-old son with duct tape, abducted Ulises and demanded money they said his brother owed them.

The attackers falsely claimed they were linked to a Mexican drug cartel and demanded a ransom from Valladares’ brother, authorities said at the time. Investigators later explained they believed that was a scare tactic designed to intimidate Valladares’ brother.

As FBI agents tried to rescue Valladares the next morning from the Trinity Gardens home where he was being held, one of the would-be rescuers shot him. Authorities later explained that the agent was using his M-4 submachine gun to break a window at the back of the home, and that Valladares — who was bound and gagged inside — grabbed the gun. Thinking a kidnapper was attempting to wrest the gun from him, the agent fired two shots, killing Valladares, authorities said.

Civil rights attorney Randall Kallinen — who is representing Valladares’ relatives in a lawsuit against the agent who shot him — said Wednesday the slain man’s autopsy contradicts authorities’ initial description of what happened in the rescue.

“The medical examiner found no gunpowder on the wound area, which means it was not a close range shot,” said Kallinen. “That refutes the concept Valladares had his hands on the weapon, as was earlier reported.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: Harris County District Attorney Ogg pushes for probe in FBI shooting of kidnapping victim

Kallinen declined a request from the Chronicle to provide a copy of the autopsy.

He criticized the FBI’s secrecy surrounding the case.

“Valladares has not received justice,” he said. “The agent’s name has never even been revealed, some 590 days after the shooting.”

Both the FBI and the Houston Police Department investigated the shooting.

In the aftermath of Valladares’ death, authorities arrested three people. Nicholas Chase Cunningham, 44, and Jimmy Tony Sanchez, 40, were charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery. Sophia Perez Heath, 36, was charged with aggravated kidnapping. In July, authorities also charged Cunningham’s wife, Delia Gualdina Velasquez, 48, with one count of aggravated kidnapping. Cunningham was sentenced in August to life in prison on aggravated robbery charges.

The case drew national attention after Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said in October that his investigators believed the agent’s claims after the shooting were “not supported” by the evidence.

On Wednesday, Acevedo said he stood by his investigators’ findings.

“Our special investigations unit did its job — which was to complete a thorough investigation — and submitted that investigation to prosecutors,” he said. “Now it’s up to the DA to decide how to proceed.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: Mystery shrouds rare FBI shooting that left kidnapping victim dead in Houston

The shooting was the first in Harris County by an FBI agent in 13 years, following a joint FBI and Houston police “MS-13” initiative in 2005 in which agents shot several suspects during an anti-gang raid in northeast Houston, killing two suspects and wounding two others.

Acevedo’s actions in October weren’t the first time local law enforcement clashed with their federal counterparts over the investigation into Valladares’ death.

Months after the shooting Ogg publicly questioned U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick over whether his staff would review the shooting, after confusion and delays over whether his office would exercise its jurisdiction in reviewing the death case. Patrick’s office subsequently recused itself, and the case was sent to the the neighboring Western District of Texas and the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General.

With the Western District’s decision not to pursue criminal charges, the case now returns to Harris County prosecutors for review and possible state charges.

Historically, lawmen who kill criminal suspects in Harris County have almost rarely faced criminal charges or indictments. A Houston Chronicle investigation in 2013 found that local grand juries no-billed HPD officers in 288 consecutive shootings dating back over a decade.

Since Ogg’s election in 2016, civil rights prosecutors have charged or won indictments against at least three lawmen who shot or killed civilians, according to information from the DA’s Office. Twenty-two officers have been indicted on excessive force charges. And most recently, two Houston police officers were charged — one with murder, the other with tampering with a government document — after a botched drug raid in January that left two civilians dead and five officers injured.

In an emailed statement, Ogg said that her prosecutors initially deferred to the DOJ on the shooting because he is an FBI agent. Nearly two years after the shooting, the case now appears headed for a local grand jury.

“Now that the U.S. Attorney’s Office has declined to file federal charges, the District Attorney’s Office has an independent obligation to present this matter to a local grand jury to determine if state criminal charges are warranted,” Ogg said. “Our Civil Rights Division is reviewing the case.”