Posted on 09/01/2007 2:05:51 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
SWANTON – A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Swanton Sector fired his weapon at an unknown driver who Thursday morning struck him with his vehicle near Alburgh Springs. Another agent, hurrying to aid his colleague, was involved in an auto accident.
The unidentified agent had stopped the vehicle, a gray SUV that had entered the country illegally from Canada, officials from the agency said.
As the agent approached the vehicle, the driver put the SUV in gear and hit the agent twice. The agent, who was uninjured, fired one round from his weapon into the driver’s compartment. The driver fled back into Canada with the vehicle.
It is unknown whether the driver of the SUV was injured during his assault on the agent, said authorities today.
A second border control agent responding to the call for assistance was injured when the patrol vehicle he was driving rolled over on an “unimproved” road. The agent was transported to Northwestern Medical Center, where he was treated for his injuries and released.
U.S. and Canadian law enforcement agencies were informed of the incident and are currently searching for the vehicle and its occupant. Those agencies include the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Vermont State Police.
Border Patrol operations officer Mark Henry this morning was asked whether he felt his office had sufficient resources to deal with current threat levels at and near the border.
“We have received a lot of resources,” he said. “Personnel, technology, infrastructure. And we are going to be receiving more.”
Anyone with any knowledge about Thursday’s incident is asked to call Henry at the Border Patrol Sector Headquarters in Swanton, (802) 247-2434.
We are under attack all over the place!
I wish they got the SUV driver. Hopefully they still will.
yup , ..
.. and , comforting to know that RCMP is right on the other side [/srcsm]
I don’t know if the officer had the opportunity to fire more rounds or if he made the decision to fire only once, but if I was in his place and I had the opportunity to fire controlled rounds at this individual I would have fired as many rounds at this creep as I could.
Are you familiar with story of J. Edgar Hoover and the agent who shot the bank robber but failed to kill him?
Supposedly, Hoover, when asked to sign a commendation for the agent who foiled the bank robbery, instead sent him for remedial maeksmanship training since he failed to kill the perpetrator.
Unmanned, yes, but plenty of electronics to get a plate number, etc.
Well, I would expect the Agent to be prosecuted and sent to prison for doing his job.
You beat me to it.
In general your assessment is good. However, since the incursion was from the north and probably involved someone who was NOT a member of one of the favored ethnic groups -- that is, NOT Hispanic -- and since the agent only fired once, he should get off with under 10 years.
Had the driver of the SUV been Hispanic and had the border agent actually fired effectively, he'd be looking at decades of hard time.
What hold does the gummint have over these guys that they don't all quit? I'd LOVE to be a BP guy if patrolling the border effectively was part of the mission AND if you got commended when you did your job.
Given the track record of this administration putting agents in jail I would say one round may be one to many. Jorge will need to find a Sutton for the northern boarder.
Odd story. How does somebody get hit twice with a car but not get hurt? Why only one shot? More details would be useful.
Law enforcement authorities in the United States and Canada searched Friday for the occupants of a car that hit a U.S. Border Patrol agent, prompting him to shoot at the vehicle.
The car, a gray sport utility vehicle, fled back into Canada after the 2 a.m. Thursday incident in Alburgh; it’s unclear whether anyone in the car was wounded.
The Border Patrol agent, whose name was not released, was not hurt, the Border Patrol said.
A second agent was slightly injured when he rolled his vehicle on a back road while responding.
The case, which is being investigated by the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Vermont State Police, is believed to be the first one in which a Border Patrol agent fired his weapon while responding to an incident on the U.S.-Canadian border.
Border Patrol spokesman Mark Henry said the last time a Border Patrol agent in Vermont fired his weapon in anger was during a 1997 shootout in Brunswick with New Hampshire resident Carl Drega. In that case, an agent was wounded by Drega, but recovered and returned to duty. Drega was killed.
The town of Alburgh is a peninsula in Lake Champlain that reaches down from Quebec. Located between Interstate 89 in Vermont and Interstate 87 in New York, the back roads of Alburgh are regularly used by smugglers.
“That’s a busy area,” Henry said. It’s usually human smuggling, but agents have caught drug smugglers there, too.
Thursday’s incident took place on an unguarded back road that crosses just west of the eastern arm of Lake Champlain. It’s not illegal to cross the border on unguarded roads, but crossers are required to report to the nearest port of entry.
Henry said the agent was on routine patrol when he stopped the car. As the agent approached, the driver put the car into gear, hitting the agent twice.
The Border Patrol contacted the RCMP, the Canadian agency responsible for border security, which in turn notified the Quebec Provincial Police, said RCMP spokesman Cpl. Luc Bessette, in Montreal.
“So far, it’s still at large. We are actively looking for the car,” Bessette said.
Bessette said he was unaware of any incidents on the Canadian side of the border in which agents have had to fire their weapons.
Border Patrol spokesman Mark Henry said the last time a Border Patrol agent in Vermont fired his weapon in anger...
WTH?
No! No! It wasn’t the driver’s fault. The SUV just had a bad attitude.
ping
Hmmm. The other side of the country from Port Angeles, where this same thing happened last week..
And I wonder if DC would give that demand the same consideration as they have mexican demands every time our guys react to violence?
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