By JACQUES BILLEAUD and PAUL DAVENPORT
Associated Press
BISBEE, Ariz. (AP) - A
Border Patrol agent was shot to death Tuesday in Arizona near the
U.S.-Mexico line, the first fatal shooting of an agent since a deadly
2010 firefight with Mexican bandits that spawned congressional probes of
a botched government gun-smuggling investigation.
The agent and a colleague
were on patrol in the desert near Naco, Ariz., about 100 miles from
Tucson, when shooting broke out shortly before 2 a.m., the Border Patrol
said. The second agent was shot in the ankle and buttocks, and was
airlifted to a hospital.
Authorities have not identified the agents, nor did they say whether any weapons were seized at the site of the shooting.
The last Border Patrol
agent fatally shot on duty was Brian Terry, who died in a shootout with
bandits near the border in December 2010. The Border Patrol station in
Naco, where the two agents shot Tuesday were stationed, was recently
named after Terry.
Terry's shooting was later
linked to the government's Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation,
which allowed people suspected of illegally buying guns for others to
walk away from gun shops with weapons, rather than be arrested.
Authorities intended to
track the guns into Mexico. Two rifles found at the scene of Terry's
shooting were bought by a member of the gun-smuggling ring being
investigated.
Critics of the operation
say any shooting along the border now will raise the specter those
illegal weapons are still being used in border violence.
"There's no way to know at
this point how the agent was killed, but because of Operation Fast and
Furious, we'll wonder for years if the guns used in any killing along
the border were part of an ill-advised gun-walking strategy," Republican
Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a written statement.
The FBI, which also is
investigating the shooting, declined to say whether investigators have
recovered guns or bullet casings at the scene of the shooting.
The U.S. government has put
thousands of sensors along the border that, when tripped, alert
dispatchers that they should send agents to a given area.
The shooting occurred after
an alarm was triggered on one of the many sensors along the border and
the three agents went to investigate, said Cochise County Sheriff's
spokeswoman Carol Capas. It is not known whether the agents returned
fire, Capas said.
The agents who were shot
were on patrol with a third agent, who was not harmed, according to
George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a
union representing about 17,000 border patrol agents. The wounded agent
was in surgery and expected to recover, McCubbin said.
Twenty-six Border Patrol agents have died in the line of duty since 2002.
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2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
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