On the night of October 10, 2012, 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was walking home on Calle Internacional in Nogales, Sonora. It would be his last walk, as a Border Patrol officer shooting his pistol from a protected area behind the border wall gunned Jose down, leaving him lying dead on the sidewalk with 13 bullets in his back.
The next month a group of concerned and caring people from Green Valley, Sahuarita, Tucson and Nogales joined with Jose Antonio’s family and friends to hold a vigil to protest the murder of the young man. Two groups marched in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, meeting at a location along the border wall.
The vigils continued, in remembrance of Jose Antonio and seeking justice for this heinous act. And as time went by, the Border Patrol and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were unresponsive to requests for information, apparently believing that their inaction would make the case go away.
But it did not. Finally, in 2015 the Justice Department brought 2nd-degree murder charges against the officer, whose attorney then tried to argue that it is legal for Border Patrol officers to shoot and kill Mexicans on the other side of the border.
The trial, originally set for early 2016, will be held in November of 2016 in Tucson.
