A person fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston, Texas, final week was carrying salt, not medication, an legal professional for his household mentioned in a press release that urged expedited testing on the substance and the discharge of the sufferer’s brother.
“You cannot shoot first and ask questions later,” legal professional Ruby Powers mentioned Thursday, whereas representing Victor Salgado Araujo, who survived the July 7 capturing that killed his older brother Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
“An unidentified substance is not a confirmed narcotic. We are requesting that the substance testing be expedited so that their names be cleared,” she mentioned.
Agents reported discovering a bagged, unidentified “white crystal-like substance” on the car’s dashboard and floorboard that the lads, who labored in building, had been driving.
This substance was granulated salt, which might be blended with lemon and water to create an electrolyte beverage for when working in excessive outside temperatures. It was not methamphetamine or another illicit substance, Powers mentioned.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare advised CNN on Thursday that he additionally doesn’t imagine the substance discovered is medication. Regardless of whether or not the substance is unlawful or not, it “has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not the use of force that killed Mr. Salgado was justified,” he added.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has mentioned that the brokers, who weren’t carrying physique cameras, had been searching for two Guatemalan males driving a white van after they noticed a similar-looking van being pushed by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in a closely Hispanic neighborhood.
The brokers opened fireplace after the car ignored their instructions and tried to take off whereas an officer was “partially inside the van or immediately next to it,” mentioned Aaron Reitz, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of Texas, in a press release Thursday.
He requested the general public for calm and an opportunity to completely examine.
“We are doing everything we can to seek the truth and do the right thing,” he mentioned.
ICE and DHS have a historical past of mendacity concerning the individuals whom federal brokers shoot.
A Houston legal professional who mentioned he spoke with three of the lads in Salgado Araujo’s car referred to as DHS’ description of the capturing “completely false.”
“At no point did they ever use the van to ram into the ICE agents, and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger,” Hugo Balderas-Ibarra mentioned in a video posted to Instagram.
He added, “The ICE agents’ accounts of what happened do not reflect — and are very inconsistent with — the stories, with the recollections, that I got from the three people that were in the vehicle with Lorenzo.”