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FULL TITLE: Border Patrol officer shoots dead a 19-year-old illegal immigrant trying to enter the country in shocking moment caught on video - then the agency flip flops on the reason why A 19-year-old Guatemalan immigrant has been shot dead by a US Border Patrol agent. Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez died on Wednesday in Rio Bravo, Texas, after an unidentified agent came across her and three others whom he suspected had entered the country illegally. As he tried to take the group into custody they reportedly charged at him and tried to attack him 'using blunt objects'.

A group of Gulf Cartel gunmen murdered a grandmother, her son, and her three grandchildren—one of them only 10-years-old—in the latest chapter of inhuman horror taking place just south of the Texas border. The murder took place Wednesday night in a rural community known as La Soledad in the border city of Rio Bravo not far from the banks of the Rio Grande. The victims were identified as 65-year-old Vicenta Garcia Sanchez, her son, 39-year-old Fidel Martinez Garcia, and her three grandchildren: 19-year-old Fidel, 15-year-old Alexis, and 10-year-old Pedro... a group of hitmen went to the area and dragged the...

Terror filled the streets of Rio Bravo as a group of men, presumably Zetas, threw at least five grenades at two bars and one business, injuring at least three people. Rio Bravo is across the Rio Grande from the Pharr-Donna Area. The attack began about 2:30 p.m. Saturday when a group of men in an SUV and a passenger car drove by the two bars and lobbed three grenades at the bar “La Lola” in the city’s East side, said a Mexican law enforcement official not authorized to speak to the media. He added that one grenade didn’t explode. Moments...

GUERRERO VIEJO, Mexico — As soon as he stepped onto the mud shore below the church ruins, Eric Ellman could visualize the party. The racers would storm across the Rio Grande, landing their kayaks and canoes to the cheers of fans lining the streets of this 200-year-old, half-sunken and abandoned town now exposed by a drought-lowered lake. After an awards ceremony in front of the church’s cleaned-up facade, camps would be set up. A band would play. Where cows now stood, couples would dance under a star-studded sky. The Rio Grande again would be a uniting element, not just a...

It has been said that director Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo (1959) as a reaction to two popular westerns which angered him - High Noon (1952) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). His comment on the former was, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him." Hawks also considered 3:10 to Yuma, which had outlaw Glenn Ford playing psychological games with lawman Van Heflin, "a lot of nonsense." So Rio Bravo was the director's take on heroism...

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced an undocumented immigrant to nearly six years in prison for shooting at two Border Patrol agents last year near Rio Bravo. The agents on the afternoon of Sept. 13 were on foot chasing immigrants along Tulipan Drive, which runs parallel to the Rio Grande, when they came upon a black truck, according to court records. From inside that truck, Bernardo Javier Gutierrez started shooting at them with a 9 mm pistol, according to Gutierrez's plea agreement. Both agents sought cover, and one fired at the truck as it pulled away, according to the plea...

BROWNSVILLE — A 25-year-old Mexican man pleaded guilty to assaulting a Border Patrol agent with a deadly weapon and illegally possessing the weapon, federal prosecutors said Monday. Bernardo Javier Gutierrez admitted to the charges in federal court in Laredo on Friday. Two men who were with Gutierrez pleaded guilty to being accessories after the fact and hindering and preventing Gutierrez’s apprehension. Gutierrez fired at two Border Patrol agents from a pickup as the agents pursued unauthorized immigrants near Rio Bravo on Sept. 13. One agent took cover and fired back as the truck sped away. Other agents apprehended the truck...

ONE OF THE great joys of the movies is their ability to convince us that we know the people on screen. Even the varied performances of the most versatile stars are often not strong enough to prevail against the overarching image we’ve formed of them. When Joan Didion met John Wayne on the set of the 1965 The Sons of Katie Elder, she wrote of having the sense that his face was more familiar to her than her husband’s. And yet Wayne, whose centenary occurred this past spring, remains in some ways the most undefined of iconic movie stars. When...

McALLEN - Increasing numbers of Mexican nationals are purchasing homes in Greater McAllen since Mexican soldiers were deployed to northern Tamaulipas in January, local real estate agents said. "They don't come right out and say it but you can tell that's the reason," said Michael Check, a sales agent with Keller Williams Realty in McAllen. "They say, ‘I consider this a safer environment for my kids.'" While no publicly available records track the nationalities of home buyers, numerous real estate professionals reported a heightened interest from northern Mexican buyers in homes in this area ranging from $120,000 to nearly $1...

Border Patrol agents arrested a member of the Mexican Mafia on Tuesday and charged him with smuggling illegal immigrants, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release.Agents from the Laredo South station arrested the gang member after receiving reports of suspicious activity near Rio Bravo, as the Rio Grande is called in Mexico. The release states that the vehicle driven by the Mexican Mafia member matched the description of a car seen near the location of the suspicious activity. When agents stopped the vehicle, occupied by a driver and four passengers, they performed an immigration inspection. The agents...

REYNOSA - Mexican military have surrounded the Reynosa Municipal Police Station, searching officers, vehicles and weapons. Witnesses say the military surrounded the police station building around 7 a.m. today. More than 300 police officers across the city are being brought in to be searched, along with personal cars and police-issued weapons. Officers at the city's precincts across the city are also being searched. The military is undertaking similar operations today in Nuevo Laredo, Rio Bravo and Matamoros, according to press reports from Monterrey and Mexico City. Military vehicles and personnel are blocking access to the station. The raids come after...

RIO BRAVO - A Pharr resident was in a Mexican prison Tuesday, accused of involvement in a deadly shootout Monday on the streets of downtown Rio Bravo, a family member said. The family member said Esteban Valdez de los Santos, 30, was visiting his mother’s house near the site of the shootout between the Mexican military and suspected drug cartel members. The firefight left three suspected cartel members dead and five Mexican federal officers and five soldiers injured. Curious what was happening, Valdez was watching the violence unfold when police dragged him into the street, threw him to the ground...

McALLEN, Texas — Three Americans were among 10 suspects arrested in a shootout with Mexican federal troops Monday that left three gunmen dead in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo.

McALLEN, Texas — Three Americans were among 10 suspects arrested in a shootout with Mexican federal troops Monday that left three gunmen dead in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo. A gunfight broke out in front of the Rio Bravo police station between Mexican soldiers, federal police and suspected drug cartel members, officials said. The Americans arrested Monday were Esteban Valdez de los Santos of Texas and Ricardo Zamora Lopez and Jose Raul Gonzalez Sanchez, both of Detroit, The McAllen Monitor reported. It wasn't immediately known where in Texas Valdez was from. The Monitor reported that at least two...

McALLEN — At least two people were killed when gunfire erupted downtown in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo on Monday. Gunfire rang out four separate times between civilians and Mexican troops, witnesses and municipal police said. Two bodies were seen being taken from the scene of three shot-up vehicles Monday afternoon, The Monitor in McAllen reported in its online editions. Witnesses said two Mexican soldiers and one Federal Police officer were also injured from grenades and gunfire earlier Monday. One soldier was transported to a hospital in Reynosa for treatment, witnesses said. Rio Bravo sits across the border...

MEXICO CITY - A shootout between Mexican authorities and suspected criminals just across the border from Texas left three people dead and eight injured on Monday, officials said. Gunfire broke out around noon when Mexican federal agents encountered a group of people carrying assault weapons in a car in the town of Rio Bravo, across the border from Donna, Texas, according to a joint statement from Mexico's federal Attorney General's office, Defense Department and Public Safety Department. Three suspected criminals died and five soldiers and three federal police officers were injured in the shootout, which took place in Tamaulipas state,...

Shooting outside downtown restaurant left 6 dead, 3 wounded RIO BRAVO — The Mexican army cordoned off Rio Bravo early Friday, one day after a shooting outside a downtown restaurant left three hospitalized and six dead, including prominent political figure Juan Antonio Guajardo Anzalduá. Soldiers searched vehicles leaving and entering the city, which sits in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas across the Rio Grande from Donna(Texas). Some residents of the city said the incident has frightened them, and the residents fear violence in the city could escalate. “We are afraid. We are very scared,” one Rio Bravo woman said in...

RIO BRAVO — Assailants wielding automatic weapons on Thursday shot and killed the former mayor of a Mexican border city and five companions outside a restaurant, local media reported. Juan Guajardo, a career politician and the former mayor of the Rio Bravo, a city across the Texas border from Mercedes, was arriving at a restaurant in downtown Rio Bravo when the gunmen opened fire, killing him, his brother, two bodyguards, his driver and an unidentified man, the government news agency Notimex reported. Officials at the attorney general's office in Tamaulipas state, where Rio Bravo is located, did not return calls....

Residents of Rio Bravo and El Cenizo are concerned about the escalating grass fires in Nuevo Laredo, which fire officials there say have been intentionally set.Warnings have been issued to residents with respiratory problems, urging them to stay indoors because of the heavy smoke drifting across the Rio Grande. Fears that flying sparks might start fires in the two Webb County cities, which have many structures made of wood, may have been realized late Thursday when a small home went up in flames. No major injuries were reported. "We have alerted the people about this emergency to help avoid health...

The trial of three men accused of a gang-related shooting in Rio Bravo are set for trial today in 49th District Court.According to investigators with the Webb County Sheriff's Department, gunfire broke out when rival gang members showed up at a birthday party for an infant in Rio Bravo, leaving two dead: 14-year-old Oscar "Seco" Martinez and 18-year-old Roberto "KK" Villarreal. They died April 16, 2005. Among several suspects arrested in connection with the shooting were Martin Jesus Carrizales, Amado Vasquez Jr. and Noel Vasquez. They are each charged with two counts of murder and have entered pleas of not...