Replies

Alexander Kirpnick, 27, United States Border Patrol
Murdered June 3, 1998

Bernardo Velardez-Lopez, Julio Cesar Arenas-Hernandez, Manuel Gamez, and Juan Manuel Umares-Rivas were stopped by Agent Kirpnick and his partner while transporting marijuana in backpacks across a well-known drug corridor west of Nogales. Agent Kirpnick had defendant Velardez-Lopez on his knees searching him when two of the suspects broke away from his partner and ran. As Kirpnick became temporarily distracted by the escape, Velardez-Lopez removed a concealed gun and shot Agent Kirpnick in the head.

Gamez was arrested almost immediately and provided information as to the whereabouts of the others. The shooter Velardez-Lopez and Arenas-Hernandez were subsequently arrested in Mexico and extradited. All three have since been convicted of the murder and numerous drug offenses and sentenced to life imprison. Velardez-Lopez was extradited from Mexico in late 1998 after the US government agreed to waive the death penalty. He was sentenced in 2000 to two consecutive life terms.

The remaining fugitive, Juan Manuel Umares-Rivas was arrested in Mexico and returned to the United States on March 4, 2004 to stand trial.

Officer Marc Atkinson, 28 Phoenix Police Department
Murdered March 28, 1999

Officer Atkinson was working a drug suppression detail, surveilling a white Lincoln Continental when his partners got called away on another detail. Shortly thereafter, three men emerged from the location and entered the vehicle. Officer Atkinson began tailing the vehicle but temporarily lost visual contact. As he turned north in search of the vehicle, 17 year old Felipe Petrona-Cabana emerged from the driver’s side and began filing his .357 caliber revolver. Atkinson was struck twice in the head and died the next day. A security guard on his way home from work observed the shooting and opened fire injuring Petrona-Cabana, who was taken into custody. Petrona-Cabana was an illegal alien who came to the United States seven months earlier from a small farming community near Acapulco in the State of Guerrero. A pound of cocaine was ultimately recovered from the vehicle.

All three suspects were illegal aliens from the same small town and were sentenced to natural life. The shooter, Petrona-Cabana, was represented in part, by an attorney hired by Mexico who successfully argued against the death penalty. Had they made it back across the border, Mexico would have demanded a determinate sentence before extraditing.