Teen's death sours image of border drug war

Marines say Mexican American shepherd shot first

By Jessie Katz LOS ANGELES TIMES

REDFORD, Texas There are two Rio Grandes wending past this lonely border
town, one river that feeds the alfalfa banks and one river that mocks
America's war on drugs.

One river nourished Esequjel Hernandez Jr.'s goats. The other took his
life. Born inside his family's adobe cottage, the shy, unassuming, 17
yearold high school sophomore seemed rooted in another time.

Junior, as he was known, talked of becoming a park ranger or game
warden. He combed the land on horseback in search of old coins and
arrowheads, storing his treasures along with a souvenir sword from the
Alamo in a locked box by his pillow. And then he had his goats, some 45
head, which he grazed every evening after supper, watching over them with
a .22caliber rifle that had been handed, down from his grandfather to
his father to him.

"That was his life, taking care of those little creatures," said his
father, Esequiel Hernandez Sr., a farm worker with a face the color of
rusty earth.

On a late May afternoon, just a few minutes after Junior ventured out
with his flock, a squad of four camouflaged U.S. Marines on a co vert
antidrug mission shot and killed the young shepherd the first time in
the long, quixotic bat tie against drugs that a U.S citizen has been
slain by his own military on U.S. soil.

The Marines, who were helping the Border Patrol stake out a reputed
smuggling corridor near the Hernandez clan's ranchito, do not allege that
Junior was trafficking in narcotics. They say only that, for some reason,
he shot twice at them and was preparing to shoot a third time when one of
them returned fire with a semiautomatic M16.

"This was in strict compliance with the rules of engagement," Marine
Col. Thomas Kelly, deputy commander of the military's antidrug task
force, said after the shooting, describing it as an unfortunate but
justifiable act of selfdefense.

But to the many people touched by Esequiel Hernandez Jr. an estimated
800 mourners trudged up a dirt road to Redford's cemetery his death was
more than a tragic footnote on a volatile border.

They say it is inconceivable that the same boy who was still studying
for his driver's license exam, knowingly could have fired at another
human being. They believe his death was a murder, committed by troops
trained for combat, not for the subtleties of a rustic Mexican American
village.

Even Texas authorities have been harsh in their assessment of the
Marines, who are allowed under U.S. rules to conduct surveillance but not
make arrests or enforce civilian laws. Prosecutors in Presidio County,
who plan to present the case to a grand jury next month, have blasted the
military for impeding their investigation.

A screwed up deal

The region's top police official, Texas Bangers Capt Barry Caver, has
expressed concerns over unspecified "discrepancies" between the Marines'
version of events and the physical evidence.

"It's a screwedup deal," Caver said. "Hopefully the truth will come
out." However the case is resolved, it has reinvigorated the
longstanding debate over the use of U.S. troops on U.S. soil, a
onceforbidden measure that has gained favor in recent years as a stopgap
against the flow of drugs.

"Whether or not the soldiers in the Redford case followed the rules of
engagement or broke the law, the problem is the policy that put them
there in the first place," said University of Texas Professor Timothy
Dunn, author of "The Militarization of the U.S.Mexico Border,
19781992."

On May 20, as he did every day, Evaro picked Junior up from Presidio
High School a 32mile round trip and dropped him off at home about 4
p.m. At 6 p.m., his father reminded him to take out the goats.

Unbeknown to Junior or to anyone else in Redford four Marines,
including a corporal identified by local officials as Clemente Banuelos,
were just starting their vigil a few hundred yards away. For three days,
they had been camped out clandestinely, moving to an observation post
each night near a low spot in the river.

If all had gone according to plan, the troops would have spent two weeks
in this spot, keeping sentry over the Rio Grande with nightvision
goggles. If they had detected any unusual activity, they would have
radioed Border Patrol agents, who could have caught up with the suspects
outside of town. At the end of the mission, the Marines would have left
without a trace.

Something went wrong

But this time, something went wrong. Banuelos and the three
other Marines have declined media requests for interviews. Ballistic
tests on Junior's rifle, to determine if or how many times it was fired,
are not yet complete.

Some neighbors, who heard only one shot that evening, question whether
Junior ever fired his weapon. If he did, he may have been shooting at a
jackrabbit, or a tin can, or even one of the wild dogs that sometimes
tormented his goats, but not at another human.

"I tend to doubt that he ever had visual contact with them," said Caver,
the Texas Bangers Captain. If Junior did see them, he would have been
looking at "four strangers, dressed up in all this regalia, out there in
the middle of nowhere," Caver added.

Meanwhile, the Marines kept Junior in their sights. They followed him
or stalked him, depending on who's doing the telling for several
hundred yards in broad daylight. No words were exchanged. They had no
procedure or training for making contact with a civilian. Under their
rules of engagement, they could do only two things: hide amid the
greasewood and prickly peer or, if they perceived an imminent threat,
respond with lethal force.

Junior, they allege, raised his rifle for a third time. The Marines were
spread out in the brush, still a good 100 yards away. But Banuelos,
according to authorities, apparently believed that one of his troops was
about to be shot. He pulled the trigger once, striking Junior in the
right of his ribcage.