A man shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent during a struggle in November in which the agent’s gun was taken has been identified and details of his wounds are detailed in an autopsy report.
Rolando Chávez Chávez, a 26-year-old Guatemala native, was part of a group agents tracked to an area about 21 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border after a sensor was activated in the Baboquivari Mountains southwest of Tucson about 11:30 a.m. on Nov. 29.
At the time, the Border Patrol said Chávez attacked an agent while he and the others were being taken into custody. During the struggle Chávez ended up on top of the agent and was able to grab the agent’s gun from its holster, the agency said in November.
A second agent then shot Chávez.
He was struck twice in the head, once in the shoulder and once in the hip, according to a Pima County’s Medical Examiner autopsy report released Wednesday. All the wounds were on the right side of the body, the report says.
The toxicology report for Chávez showed no drugs in his system.
Greg Hess, Pima County’s medical examiner, said his office cannot determine from the autopsy what positions either Chávez or the agent were in at the time of the shooting.
Three other Guatemalans who were part of the group of suspected illegal border crossers were arrested. Since then, two have returned to Guatemala and a woman has requested asylum and is going through the process, according to the Guatemalan Consul in Tucson, Carlos de León.
This was the first time Chávez attempted to cross, de León said. The four Guatemalans were part of a larger group when they got separated and continued the journey together, he said. They did not know each other before the crossing attempt.
The Tohono O’odham Police Department, the lead agency in the shooting investigation, did not respond to multiple calls from the Arizona Daily Star.
There were 66 use-of-force instances by Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector from the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2016 to Aug. 31, according to Customs and Border Protection. Three of those instances involved firearms.
