Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was struck 10 times by bullets shot by one or more Border Patrol agents firing through the fence into Nogales, Mexico.



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NOGALES, Mexico -- One year ago Thursday, on Calle Internacional, under the shadow of the border fence, a teenage boy was riddled with bullets by one or more Border Patrol agents shooting through the fence into Mexico.
Now, as that boy's mother awaits answers to who the agent was who killed her son and why, she questions the U.S. investigation of this shooting, which she sees as secretive, opaque and exceedingly slow.
"I want to look the agent who shot him in the face and ask him why he did it," she said Thursday. "The one time the Department of Justice attorneys met with us, they asked me and (her son) Diego hours of questions as though they were looking for some way they make it Jose Antonio's fault he was shot."
The Department of Justice has declined to comment on its investigation. But Araceli Rodriguez said she knows they have interviewed at least one of two Mexican witnesses who have come forward. Those witnesses' accounts – along with a transcript of a Border Patrol agent's call to Mexican state police -- paint a different picture of the death than the version the Border Patrol has offered.
Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was 16 when he was shot. He was the sixth Mexican citizen to be killed since the start of 2010 by Border Patrol officers firing from U.S. soil into Mexico. In that time span, Border Patrol agents or Customs and Border Protection officers have killed 20 people. (A 21st death, in San Diego, is less clear cut, involving a man who died from an infection while hospitalized for injuries he received from Border Patrol agents.)
In eight of those cases, including Jose Antonio's death, agents said they were shooting at rock throwers.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection, has not said whether any agents involved in any of the deaths have been cleared or disciplined. In every case, Homeland Security has resisted identifying the agents. Even in wrongful-death suits, the department has sought, not always successfully, to keep the agents' names out of court records.
Questions about how deadly incidents are investigated, and how agents are trained on when to use deadly force, surged after a PBS documentary a year ago. The film showed cellphone video of a group of CBP officers and Border Patrol agents beating and firing a Taser five times at an undocumented immigrant lying on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back, at the San Ysidro border crossing in May 2010.
Sixteen members of Congress demanded that Homeland Security's Inspector General investigate that and other deadly-force incidents and Customs and Border Protection's use-of-force policies.
The Inspector General's report, released last month, recommended additional training but didn't examine any of the specific incidents that had led to the letter. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., one of the members of Congress who pressed for the report, said recently that he expects the members will continue to press for more answers.
Neither Araceli Rodriguez nor her attorneys have been told the name or names of the agents involved in Jose Antonio's death, they said.
Thursday evening, in Nogales, friends of the family and protesters will hold a march, intended to try to keep the case alive in the public mind, ending near the spot where the youth was shot to death on Oct. 10, 2012.
According to his family, shortly before 11:30 p.m. Jose Antonio was walking from his grandmother's house, a few blocks from the border, to see his older brother, whose shift was about to end at a convenience store off Calle Internacional, which runs just below the border fence.
He had been keeping late hours after dropping out of school, though his grandmother, Taide Elena, said he was to start up again the following Monday.



At about that time, Nogales, Ariz., police and Border Patrol agents converged on the U.S. side of the fence, responding to reports of two men who had climbed over the fence with bundles that were presumed to be drugs.
Nogales police and the Border Patrol reported that, as they tried to arrest two men climbing back over the fence into Mexico, rocks began flying over from the other side. At least one Border Patrol agent standing next to the fence fired as many as 14 rounds from a .40-caliber Heckler & Koch P2000 handgun. According to Mexican medical examiners, 10 of those hollow-point rounds hit Jose Antonio, all but one in the back.
Border Patrol agents are allowed to use deadly force to protect themselves or others from death or serious injury; and as a matter of policy, the agency considers rocks to be deadly weapons.
But one Mexican witness, Isidro Alvarado, who called the Mexican equivalent of 911 that night to report the shooting, said he was walking behind Jose Antonio when he saw two men run past from the other direction, saw shots from two spots along the fence, and saw the youth fall dead.
A second witness, Jose Carlos Marques Zarate, who lives near the spot, told Mexican investigators that he saw four men, some with rocks in their hands, run past his house. Then he heard a series of shots, walked out, and saw Jose Antonio lying dead in the street.
"The DOJ keeps telling us they're investigating," said Luis Parra, Rodriguez's attorney, "but I don't know how much legwork they've really done in Mexico."
Parra obtained a transcript of calls made to the Mexican emergency number the evening of the shooting. He provided a copy to The Republic on Wednesday night.
In one of those calls, made six minutes after the shooting, a Border Patrol agent who gave the last name Lopez says someone has been injured on the Mexican side of the border. Under questioning, he eventually admits that the Border Patrol fired the shots, but he doesn't say how many of the five agents at the fence fired.
For her part, Rodriguez says she's sure that U.S. officials know exactly what happened, since border fence cameras would have captured everything on film.
"I want justice. I'm not begging for it. I'm not praying for it. I'm demanding it, as any mother would," she said. "I can't and I won't let this go."