A Mexican American man was killed in the northern border city of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, on Sunday when a state police officer opened fire on the car he was driving.
The deceased man, a U.S. citizen, has been identified in media reports as Julián Alfredo Rodríguez Medina. According to family members, he worked as a nursing assistant in El Paso, Texas, on the other side of the U.S. border from Ciudad Juárez.
Será ministerial acusado formalmente por homicidio
– El estadunidense Julián Alfredo Rodríguez Medina fue abatido por el elemento de la AEIhttps://t.co/jI1TnRiIcV
— El Diario de Juárez (@diariodejuarez) January 7, 2025
The blue Mustang Julián Alfredo Rodríguez Medina was driving when he was shot Sunday by an on-duty Chihuahua state police officer.
Rodríguez, reportedly accompanied by his brother and a friend at the time of his death, was shot by a state police officer in the neighborhood of Melchor Ocampo. The victim’s family reportedly lives in that neighborhood. Family members said that Rodríguez was unarmed when he was killed.
The officer who killed Rodríguez has been identified by media outlets as Arturo Iván V. S., a commander in a police unit known as Grupo K-9. He is currently in custody and could face intentional homicide charges.
Carlos Manuel Salas, head prosecutor in the northern zone of Chihuahua, said on Monday that the shooting occurred while the officer was accompanying a state Attorney General’s Office (FGE) agent serving a warrant issued by a sexual crimes unit.
He said that the two police officers, reportedly a married couple, were on foot when a Mustang with New Mexico license plates accelerated in their direction.
Salas said that the vehicle “almost brushed the police agent” before it was “violently” put into reverse. The police officer opened fire as the driver attempted to escape, the prosecutor said. The vehicle came to a stop after it hit a parked SUV.
KVIA, a television station in El Paso, published a video it said was “taken by a passenger of the vehicle during the shooting.”
Gunshots can be heard ringing out and someone repeatedly shouts, “No!”
Salas raised questions about the actions of the man who was killed.
“Why would you accelerate? Why would you drive at that speed?” he asked.
Salas asserted that if a similar scenario unfolded in another country, such as the United States, police would also likely respond with force. He said that an internal affairs division of the FGE would investigate the killing. Salas described the incident as “regrettable.”
A man who said he was the victim’s brother told the newspaper El Diario that he and the others in the Mustang didn’t make any threat toward the police officer who opened fire. He also said they didn’t shout at the officers or “skid” the car.
Jorge, as the man identified himself, attended a state government event in Ciudad Juárez on Monday in an attempt to personally meet with Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos and demand justice for his brother. However, she didn’t end up attending the event, El Diario said.
The brother of the victim also said he was grazed by a bullet and subsequently beaten by the police officer who opened fire. He said that the officer also made a death threat against him.
The victim’s mother also called for justice and declared that the authorities should say what really happened.
“Statements have been made that [my sons] attacked first when that was never the case,” the woman, who asked not to be identified, told reporters.
“They didn’t have guns, I had sent them to the shop [to get food],” she said.
A spokesman for the United States Embassy in Mexico said that U.S. officials were “closely monitoring local authorities’ investigation into the reported killing.”
The death of Rodríguez comes after two American citizens and a Mexican national were shot dead in the Mexican state of Durango late last year. A Chicago teenager, Jason Peña, was shot in the head in the same attack and subsequently transferred to a hospital in Texas, where he remained in a critical condition on Monday. His father and uncle, both U.S. citizens, and a Mexican relative were killed.
On Dec. 30, a 62-year-old man from Illinois was killed when he was shot on a highway in Zacatecas.
ABC 7 Chicago reported that “Jesus Macias was traveling along a highway in the Mexican state of Zacatecas when, his family says, he failed to stop at an improvised checkpoint set up not by police, but by the drug cartels.”
“His omission, they said, led to him being shot and killed in front of his mother, wife and young son,” the report said.
With reports from Animal Político, La Verdad, KVIA, The New York Times and Border Report
