The three men with the 52-year-old Houston man who was fatally shot by an immigration agent earlier this week disputed the federal government’s narrative of the deadly episode, saying Lorenzo Salgado Araujo never tried to run over anyone, according to the Washington Post.
Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, an immigration attorney representing the three men who were passengers in the van driven by Salgado Araujo, talked to the men, who are in immigration custody, on Thursday afternoon, according to his office.
Balderas-Ibarra also received written statements from the men and shared them with the Washington Post.
According to a statement on Tuesday from an ICE spokesperson, federal agents attempted to stop Salgado Araujo’s van as part of a “targeted enforcement” operation. The statement said Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”
“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, wrote in a handwritten statement. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
The men told Balderas-Ibarra that they were on their way to a construction job site after buying ice and water about 6:30 a.m. When they pulled up to a stoplight they noticed an unmarked vehicle following them, the newspaper reported.
As Salgado Araujo began to accelerate at a green light, the other vehicle got onto the shoulder, accelerated and cut in front of the van, the men said, according to Balderas-Ibarra’s account.
Salgado Araujo then made a U-turn and that’s when agents turned on the police lights on their unmarked vehicle, the Post reported. At that point Salgado Araujo, according to the newspaper, was not driving more than 5 miles per hour when agents rammed their vehicles into his work van.
“Lorenzo thought we had lost them but suddenly they surrounded us,” Rojas wrote by hand on a legal pad viewed by The Post.
That’s when an ICE agent got out of the unmarked vehicle and yelled “Stop.” He then fired his weapon from the van’s passenger side, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, according to the newspaper.
Salgado Araujo stopped and put the van in park when officers fired repeatedly into the van, the Washington Post reported.
“When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” wrote Victor Salgado, the driver’s brother, according to Balderas-Ibarra readout of his notes to the Washington Post.
Rojas described the ICE agents violently pulling Salgado Araujo out of the van and throwing him to the ground, the Post reported. They put handcuffs on the other men’s wrists and feet and put them on the ground as Salgado Araujo yelled for help as he bled out.
“It just happened so fast,” Salgado told the attorney, according to the Washington Post.
“They’re good people who didn’t deserve this,” Balderas-Ibarra told the Washington Post. “They were cooperating and not resisting.”
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