MARINES TIED TO TEEN DEATH ARE FAULTED ON TRAINING

EL PASO, Texas -- Marines involved in the killing of a teenage goatherd
during an anti-drug patrol along the Mexican border were not adequately
trained for an armed operation among civilians, the military concluded in an
internal report.

In the harshest official criticism of the operation yet released, the report
also said Marine commanders did not do enough to prevent the encounter that
ended in the shooting death of 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez Jr.

The mission "appears to have been viewed at every level of Marine Corps
command as more of a training opportunity than a real world deployment,"
wrote retired Marine Maj. Gen. John Coyne, who investigated the shooting.

The report was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the San
Antonio Current, a weekly newspaper, and by Common Sense for Drug Policy, a
non-profit group in Falls Church, Va.

The Marine Corps submitted an internal response, also released under the
Freedom of Information Act, in which it disputed Coyne's conclusions.

Hernandez was killed May 20, 1997, while herding goats along the Rio Grande
near Redford, 200 miles southeast of El Paso.

The military said that he fired his .22-caliber rifle twice at members of a
Marine patrol assigned to guard against smuggling along the border and that
he had raised the weapon to fire a third time when Cpl. Clemente Banuelos
shot him once with an M-16 rifle.

Relatives said that Hernandez would never knowingly have shot at anyone and
that he carried the rifle solely to protect his livestock from wild dogs and
to shoot targets. Military patrols along the border were suspended after the
shooting.

No criminal or military disciplinary charges were filed against the Marines,
and they were cleared by state and federal grand juries. The Hernandez
family received a $1 million settlement from the government.

Coyne said that the Marines did not get enough training on the appropriate
use of force among civilians. He also said that the mission commander, Capt.
Lance McDaniel, who was in contact with the Marine patrol by radio from a
command center more than 60 miles away, was too passive in deferring to
Banuelos' judgment.

McDaniel and other supervisors disagreed with a corporal's decision in the
command center to authorize Banuelos to return fire, but they did not
immediately correct it, the report said.

McDaniel "should have made a more aggressive effort to obtain the facts and
control the tactical decision-making process," Coyne wrote.

The Marine Corps has previously rebutted the report in a written response,
denying the contention that military officials failed to recognize the
operation as a real mission.

A Marine spokesman said Wednesday that officials stand by their original
statements regarding the report.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst