An American man was killed when a Mexican police officer opened fire on the car he was driving in Ciudad Ju├бrez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, the Mexican authorities said on Monday.
A regional prosecutor in the state of Chihuahua, Carlos Manuel Salas, said the shooting occurred on Sunday as the officer was accompanying a staff member from the prosecutor’s office, who was serving a warrant. The two were on foot when a Mustang with New Mexico license plates suddenly accelerated in their direction, according to Mr. Salas. He said the officer opened fire as the driver tried to flee.
Mr. Salas said the officer was in custody and that the shooting, which was captured on video by a passenger in the car, would be investigated by the internal affairs division of the state prosecutorтАЩs office. At a news conference, Mr. Salas described the incident as тАЬregrettableтАЭ and urged the public to refrain from drawing conclusions until the investigation was complete.
But he appeared to offer a defense of the officer, whose name was not released. According to Mr. Salas, the vehicle was traveling at high speed and skidded as it approached the officer, almost hitting him. The driver was wearing a hood, he said.
тАЬWhy would you accelerate?тАЭ he asked. тАЬWhy would you drive at that speed?тАЭ
Mr. Salas argued that if something similar happened in another country, including the United States, the police would also likely respond with force.
The authorities did not identify the man who was killed, describing him only as a nursing assistant from El Paso. But Mexican news outlets reported that his name was Juli├бn Alfredo Rodr├нguez Medina. News reports said the man and at least one of the two passengers in the car had family members who lived nearby.
In an interview with the news outlet El Diario, a man who identified himself as a brother of the driver, and who said he had been in the car, asked state officials to bring charges against the officer.
The man, who identified himself only as Jorge A. R., said he and the other men in the car had been out to get something to eat when they were fired on. He said they had not posed a threat and that they were at a considerable distance from the officer when he opened fire.
тАЬAt no time did we make any threats to him, nor did we yell at him, nor did we skid the car,тАЭ El Diario quoted the man as saying.
Mr. Salas, the prosecutor, said American officials had been notified about the shooting in accordance with protocol. A spokesman for the United States Embassy said in a statement that тБаofficials were тАЬclosely monitoring local authoritiesтАЩ investigation into the reported killing.тАЭ
The incident is the latest in a string of violent deaths of Americans in Mexico.
Last week, a 62-year-old man from Rockford, Ill., was shot at a highway checkpoint in the state of Zacatecas that his family said was being run by a criminal organization. Days earlier, two American citizens and a Mexican national were shot dead in the state of Durango in an ambush that also left an American teenager critically injured.
MexicoтАЩs president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has pledged to rein in the violence that has racked much of the country. While officials often point to fights between drug-trafficking cartels as the cause of the bloodshed, experts say violence involving the police is also not uncommon.
The shooting of the American on Sunday generated heated debate after the video recorded by the passenger was posted on social media. Many called for harsh consequences for the detained officer, and some commenters made death threats.
On Monday, the authorities announced an arrest in the Durango shooting, which occurred on Dec. 27. They identified the suspect as Iram Uranga Armend├бriz, and they said the shooting had stemmed from a dispute over a debt related to a land deal.
Mr. Uranga has been accused of shooting two of the men in the head, then the two others тАФ including the teenager тАФ from behind as they tried to flee on foot. The teenager, Jason Pe├▒a, a 14-year-old from Chicago, was said to be in critical condition at a Houston hospital on Monday.
Emiliano Rodr├нguez Mega contributed reporting.
