Published: April 12, 2008 01:59 am         

Civil trial in deadly Border Patrol shooting ends

EL PASO — A 19-year-old illegal immigrant shot to death by a U.S. Border Patrol agent four years ago was nothing more than a scared kid, a lawyer for the family suing the government told a judge Friday.

"It was five agents and a scared 19-year-old boy with a pipe," Enrique Moreno argued in his closing argument of the federal civil trial in the death of Juan Patricio Peraza. "Those agents ... knew the rules."

Peraza's parents, Cesar Peraza Barraza and Ramona Irene Quijada-Soto, both Mexican nationals, filed the lawsuit in 2005. The younger Peraza was shot to death Feb. 22, 2003, after a confrontation with six Border Patrol agents near a downtown El Paso immigrant shelter where he was living.

Moreno argued to the judge hearing the case that when Agent Vernon Neil Billings shot Peraza twice, less than 45 seconds after arriving at the tense scene, he acted too quickly.

"The evidence is overwhelming that what happened in this case is Agent Billings turned a foot chase into a shooting," Moreno told U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard P. Mesa.

Harold Brown, a lawyer for the government, countered that Peraza is dead because he ran from Border Patrol agents, threatened them with a pipe, and then charged at Billings with that pipe.

"Mr. Peraza does what he should not do," Brown told the judge. "He charges an agent who shoots in self defense."

Brown argued that every agent at the scene that day would have been justified in shooting Peraza. That they didn't, he told the judge, doesn't make Billings' decision wrong.

Billings was the last agent at the scene that day and the only one to shoot.

Earlier in the weeklong trial, Billings testified that he was forced to shoot Peraza.

"He had the pipe over his shoulder in an aggressive manner," Billings said. "He cranked the pipe over his right shoulder."

Mesa gave lawyers in the case until May 5 to file additional documents in the case. It is unclear when the judge will issue a verdict.