Mudered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry Was Defending Himself With Bean Bags

July 9, 2012 | Filed under Fast and Furious | Posted by

In the Justice Department indictment against five individuals alleged to be involved in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death, there’s a shocking detail. While the drug cartel was using guns walked to them by U.S. government, Terry and other agents were using gear more useful for riot control. Fox News has the details.

For the first time, federal officials also revealed that Terry and an elite squad of federal agents initially fired bean bags — not bullets — at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011. During the exchange, Terry was shot and killed.

The 11-count indictment, originally handed up by a grand jury in November 2011, implicates five defendants in the killing. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident.

The two men in custody are Manuel Osario Arellanes — who was wounded in the foot the night of the firefight — and his brother Rito. Rito, who was arrested two nights before the Terry shooting, allegedly helped provide weapons to the criminal gang used in the shooting. All six men named in the indictment are either related or friends.

We’re still looking for a copy of the indictment to see why these agents brought bean bags to a gun fight.

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Posted by on July 9, 2012.
Filed under Fast and Furious.
Tagged with: .
Doug Johnson is a news junkie and long time blog reader, turned author.

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  • Hank_M

    Bean bags??

    Are you kidding me?

    As someone elsewhere said…

    So while we disarmed our agents, we were busy arming their killers?

  • http://www.outsidethebeltway.com rodney dill

    I take it everyone reading this knows what bean bags are. Still far less than the lethal attack that would be warranted against heavily armed drug cartel members.

    • jim_m

      It is the standard defense posture of the United States under 0bama. The same level of response can be anticipated in the event of an invasion of our allies or of our own country.

  • herddog505

    In a more sane world, it would make sense for a Border Patrol agent to carry beanbags; we’re not interested in killing (most) people who try to hop the border.

    However, in the real world, where heavily-armed and murderous drug cartels smuggle drugs over the border, it’s insanity to not give our Border Patrol agents all the weapons they need to defend themselves and defeat the crooks (history repeats itself: see the Kansas City Massacre of 1935).

    At risk of sounding paranoid, it THIS what Barry meant by gun control “under the radar”?

    • jim_m

      The other problem this points out is a chronic problem that we have with arming our law enforcement agents with inappropriate ammunition. The Miami Shootout demonstrated that arming law enforcement with rounds that are intended to injure a criminal without killing them is a mistake.

      • herddog505

        I’m old-fashioned:
        Depending on the terrain (I assume that virtually all of the southwest is pretty open country):

        M-14 rifle
        M-1911A1 pistol

        A bit heavier than an M-4 and a Glock 17, perhaps, but I feel pretty confident that there would be damned few “I hit him and he kept going” incidents.

    • 914

      In a sane world Barry Soetoro would still be in Kenya.

      • herddog505

        Or a street hustler in Chicago.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Stan25 Stan Brewer

    I still think that there should be a shoot to kill order on the border. Especially if the perpetrator is armed to the teeth. Sure there are a lot of unarmed people crossing the border, but the ones that are guiding them are armed. It should not be too hard to see who has weapons with the night vision technology that we have. Oh that’s right, night vision stuff is not allowed to be carried by border patrol personal. That is what you get when you allow the politically correct folks run things.

    • herddog505

      I think that a “shoot to kill” order is a bit extreme. Yes, officers (and civilians in the area, for that matter) should certainly be allowed to use lethal force to protect themselves (and officers should have appropriate arms and ammunition for that purpose), but I don’t see the need to even suggest that people trying to sneak in to get a job – or even welfare – should be shot.

      • jim_m

        It would put a swift end to the majority of illegal immigration.

        • herddog505

          So would nuking northern Mexico, but I don’t want to do that, either.

  • GarandFan

    “We’re still looking for a copy of the indictment to see why these agents brought bean bags to a gun fight.”

    “Rules of Engagement” from Her Highness of Homeland Security. It’s easy to be “non-lethal” when your fat ass is in an air-conditioned office in Washington DC.

    Hell, you should see the signs in Arizona. Official notification that the government park areas south of I-8 are unsafe to enter.