EX-DRUG AGENT PLEADS GUILTY IN SHOOTING

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- A former drug task force officer has pleaded guilty to
shooting an 18-year-old Mexican man in the back as he crossed the Rio
Grande last year, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Wilbur
Honeycutt, who had been assigned to a multiagency Drug Enforcement
Administration task force, faces a sentence from seven years to life
imprisonment for firing at Abecnego Monje Ortiz.

Honeycutt entered the plea before an Eagle Pass judge on Monday to avoid
putting Monje Ortiz through the additional hardship of a trial, defense
attorney Patrick Filyk told the San Antonio Express-News in today's
editions. Monje Ortiz, now 19 years old, was struck between the shoulder
blades as he ran through a rural area of Maverick County on Jan. 25, 1999.
He had just crossed the river in an inner tube with about 14 other people.
Filyk blamed the shooting on the DEA, which he said failed to properly
train and supervise his client during his 10-month stint on the border. An
agency spokesman declined to comment because of a $15.1 million civil
lawsuit filed by the victim's family against the DEA. State District Judge
Amado Abascal III will sentence Honeycutt on Nov. 30. The shooting was less
than two years after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez
near Redford along the West Texas border.

The teen-ager was herding his family's goats when a U.S. Marine in an
anti-drug patrol shot him to death.