Posted on 05/26/2002 4:03:36 PM PDT by RippleFire
A 23-year-old Avra Valley man was arrested early Friday after he and a relative chased a truckload of migrants, pistol-whipped the driver and forced 14 others to the ground at gunpoint, authorities said.
The men, Nathan Marty Ryan and 44-year-old Victor H. Cantrell, told Pima County sheriff's officials that the migrants' truck almost hit their Chevrolet Blazer while speeding with its lights off near Avra Valley Road near the Silverbell Mine at 1:30 a.m.
The men - who'd been in the area with other family members to look for UFOs and photograph the night sky - said they started chasing the truck to get its license plate number, according to a Sheriff's Department report on the incident.
As the chase continued, they passed the vehicle, which then rammed them from behind, the report said. Ryan fired a single shot from his handgun at the truck and Cantrell told authorities he fired into the air twice.
The two vehicles came to a stop at a bar in the 16500 block of West Avra Valley Road and Ryan grabbed the driver, 29-year-old Juan Rubio, striking him in the head several times with his handgun, according to the migrants. The group said Ryan continued assaulting Rubio as the man tried to escape.
Four of the migrants ran into the desert, the report says, while Cantrell ordered the 14 others from the truck at gunpoint and had them lie on the ground until deputies arrived.
Rubio was treated by medics at the scene for facial lacerations, but was not hospitalized. Neither Ryan nor Cantrell was injured, authorities said.
Tammy Ryan, who is Nathan Ryan's mother, and Cantrell, who is related to the Ryans by marriage, told a different version of the story.
They said Rubio put up a fight and grabbed the pistol from Nathan Ryan's waistband during the altercation.
Nathan Ryan managed to get the firearm back, they said, and hit Rubio with it in self-defense.
"He was only trying to keep the guy from getting the gun away from him," Cantrell said.
Ryan then threw the pistol into the desert to keep it out of the fight, Cantrell said. Cantrell joined the fight and the two of them subdued the driver.
"He was finally just so wore out, he couldn't do no more," Cantrell said.
The men, who had guns because they were target shooting, also said the migrants voluntarily lay on the ground, as if to give themselves up.
Nathan Ryan was taken to the Pima County Jail on one count of aggravated assault with a firearm and held until early Friday afternoon, when he was released to Pre-Trial Services.
Rubio, who is from Mazatlan, Mexico, remained in custody Friday on suspicion of alien smuggling. He and another migrant also were being detained because they are material witnesses for Pima County, said U.S. Border Patrol Agent Dave BeMiller, an agency spokesman.
BeMiller said the other 13 migrants were returned voluntarily to Mexico on Friday.
"It's a rare case, fortunately," he said of the incident.
Still, such cases do happen.
Rancher Roger Barnett and his brother, Don, who live near Douglas, gained international attention for more than a dozen incidents since April 1999 in which authorities alleged the pair was armed or used weapons to capture migrants on Roger Barnett's Cross Rail Ranch.
The brothers, who turned over the migrants to the Border Patrol in all the incidents, also helped save the life of a migrant and her 12-year-old son last May.
But officials caution against citizens taking the law into their own hands.
"If anyone sees anything suspicious, they should call us and we will respond," said Ryan Scudder, a supervisory Border Patrol agent. "Don't ever attempt to take things into your own hands because you never know what you have. Law enforcement is trained for those situations."
Deputy Steve Easton, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department, agreed.
"Obviously we don't recommend that anyone involve themselves in anything that would put their safety or the safety of anyone else at risk, unless the imminent threat to someone's life exists," he said. "We request that they be the best witnesses they could be to the incident and report everything they can to law enforcement officers when they arrive."
Ryan then threw the pistol into the desert to keep it out of the fight,
Don't know who (if anyone) is in the right here, but Ryan and company are definitely a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
The law will go easy on the migrants and punish the other guys for a hate crime.
Tell him he is holding the wrong man.
The word that describes this is "propaganda". It is a deliberate effort by the media to portray illegal criminal invaders of our country as "economic refugees" who are:
"Only trying to provide for their families" (by breaking the law)
"Doing the jobs Americans won't do" (for slave wages)
"Share our family values" (like organized criminal activity?)
You'll find this sort of garbage in most daily newspapers now. It is not a coincedence. You will also find this nonsense spewed by a disturbing number of posters on this so-called "conservative" web site. You know, the ones who benefit from employing cheap, illegal scab labor.
You must become used to your new fellow citizens, peasant.
For interrupting the flow of Republican voters? LOL!
Why would fed-up American citizens in Arizona take matters into their own hands, when the Border Patrol and the INS has been doing such a bang-up job until now?
LOL!
Yeah let the "professionals" deal with it, they have done such a great job so far.
Hey Saber, these guys should get a couple of your B.P.V.R. t-shirts.
I hope O'Reilly's camera team is still in Arizona. I'd like to see the interview from our 'Southern Front'. Maybe Tancredo can run down there and give these two fine, upstanding citizens an award from his Congressional Committee? That would really flip Bush and Rove out.
LOL.
Now, if Saber will send 2 more of his B.P.V.R. t-shirts to Tom Tancredo and Bill O'Reilly, with honorary regimental commissions, we could have the makings of some real entertaining tv this week.
How long do you think it will take Geraldo to show up in Arizona making like a 'foreign correspondent', again? ;^)
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