http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/peru-a24.shtml
Missionary plane shot down in Peru: collateral damage in US "drug war"
Following the revelation that a reconnaissance aircraft carrying CIA contract employees participated in the April 20 shoot-down of a plane carrying an American missionary family over the Peruvian Amazon region, Washington has attempted to pin the blame on the Peruvian military.
Whatever the exchange between the CIA contractors and the Peruvian Air Force officer aboard the spy plane, a Peruvian jet fighter was called in and shot into the plane, killing the woman and her baby. It then continued strafing the survivors—the wounded pilot, Ms. Bowers' husband James and their six-year-old son—as they clung to the plane's burning wreckage after it crashed into the Amazon River.
DEA Kills 14-Year-Old Girl in San Antonio, Claims Self Defense
Fourteen-year-old Ashley Villarreal of San Antonio died on February 11 after being shot in the head three days earlier by a DEA agent while driving away from her home.
Ashley Villarreal was the unintended victim of a DEA stake-out designed to catch her father, Joey Villarreal, whom the DEA suspected of involvement in cocaine sales.
The man in the vehicle, David Robles, was not the DEA's suspect.
According to Trevino, Ashley Villarreal continued to drive toward the approaching agents, at which point two DEA agents fired two shots each into the car, striking the girl in the back of the head. Trevino did not explain how a boxed-in car could continue to drive or how it became a threat to the narcs.
There are other questions and doubts about the police version of events. "The agents made it very clear to the people in the car that they were police, that they were agents," Trevino said. But David Robles told the Express News that as Ashley drove him away from the house, it appeared that they were being pursued by unknown assailants. Neither, said Robles, did the assailants identify themselves as law enforcement officers until after they shot into the trapped vehicle, fatally wounding the girl.
Robles' account was supported by "earwitnesses" who heard a crash and then shots. Manuel Martinez, who lives across the street from the shooting site, told the Express News he heard a crash followed by gunfire. "I heard them call to 'Stop! Don't move,'" he said. "I didn't hear them say they were policemen." Other witnesses cited by the Express News supported that account, raising the obvious question about what threat Ashley posed to the agents after her vehicle had already been stopped and boxed in.
DEA agent Bill Swierc has been named as the man who fired the fatal shots, and both the DEA and the San Antonio Police Department are investigating the killing. But as readers of this newsletter know, police shooters in drug cases are rarely bound over for prosecution.
http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/169/modesto.shtml
Last October, DRCNet reported on the shooting death of elementary school student Alberto Sepulveda during a raid by the Modesto, California, SWAT team as it executed a federal search warrant in a methamphetamine trafficking investigation Now, after three separate investigations by Modesto police and the city attorney, Modesto police can say only that it was an accident.
Hawn, a veteran member of the Modesto SWAT team, shot and killed young Sepulveda as the boy, following Hawn's barked commands, lay prone on his bedroom floor. At a January 10th press conference called to announce the result of the department's investigations, Police Chief Roy Wasden said Hawn's Benelli shotgun could have misfired, Hawn could have accidentally squeezed the trigger, or Hawn's equipment, particularly a knife on his belt, could have accidentally caused the gun to discharge.
Wasden, however, pointed the finger at the federal law enforcement agencies -- DEA, FBI, and IRS -- at whose behest the Modesto SWAT team executed the warrant.
Across South America, children are being killed by drug war cops.
On April 17, 2003, four unarmed male teens begged for their lives after being caught in a drug sting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Police shot them all in the back of the head, execution style. At their funerals, unrepentant officers harassed and intimidated the family members of their victims, hoping to scare them from pressing charges.
One night in 1993, 50 homeless children lay huddled together on the steps of a Rio church. According to media reports, five hooded men, arriving in vehicles, fired into their sleeping mass, killing four before they could begin to flee, perhaps before they awoke. A fifth was shot in the back as he ran for cover. Three more were abducted and two of those three were executed later that night. The third was left for dead after being shot in the face. It was later discovered that three of the hooded gunmen were off-duty military police, employed by the US in the war on drugs.
In 2001, police officially killed 52 children in Rio alone. The majority of all police killings in Rio were done with a single shot from behind or to the head. To keep the numbers down, police used secret graves to bury many little bodies
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