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?