Pubdate: Sat, 27 Feb 1999
Source: Associated Press
Copyright: 1999 Associated Press

DEA IS SUED OVER BORDER SHOOTING

SAN ANTONIO (AP) The family of an 18-year-old Mexican man shot in the back
by a drug task force officer as he crossed the Rio Grande last month is
seeking $25 million from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

A bullet struck Abecnego Monje Ortiz between the shoulder blades as he ran
through a rural area of Maverick County on Jan. 25, leaving him paralyzed.
He had just crossed the river in an inner tube with about 14 other people.

"I crossed the border in order to seek work in the United States, carrying
nothing more than a jug of water," Monje says in the claim, which was filed
as the first step toward a possible lawsuit. "At the moment I was shot, I
was running in the opposite direction from the man who shot me."

Wilbur Honeycutt, an officer assigned full-time to a multiagency drug task
force of the DEA, shot Monje about 13 miles north of Eagle Pass, according
to the DEA.

The FBI, the Maverick County Sheriff's Office and the Department of Public
Safety are investigating. But authorities declined to say if Honeycutt was
on or off duty at the time of the shooting, or to provide more details
before the inquiry is complete.

The area around Eagle Pass has been designated a "High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area," where agencies are trying to stop undocumented immigrants
and drugs from entering the country.

The shooting happened less than two years after the fatal shooting of 18-
year-old Esequiel Hernandez near Redford along the West Texas border. The
teen- ager was herding his family's goats when a U.S. Marine in an anti-drug
patrol shot him to death.

Amid a national outcry over the 1997 shooting, the Pentagon suspended armed
military patrols on the Southwest border. To settle a claim filed by
Hernandez's survivors, the government bought a $1 million annuity for the
family.

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