By Renee Hickman
CHICAGO (Reuters) -A woman who was shot multiple times by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents did not ram them with her car and had her weapon stored in her purse at the time of the incident, according to her lawyer, contradicting accounts by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that described the shooting as an act of self-defense.
Marimar Martinez, 30, was charged on October 5 with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon after she followed a vehicle driven by border patrol agents with her car in the Brighton Park neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side.
The vehicles made contact, and a federal agent fired their weapon at Martinez, a U.S. citizen, according to a criminal complaint.
DHS said Martinez was armed with a gun, but Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, said that she never brandished it.
SECOND SHOOTING BY FEDERAL AGENTS IN CHICAGO The incident on October 4 is at least the second time that federal agents have fired their weapons at Chicago-area residents since U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration launched an aggressive immigration sweep in Chicago last month.
Parente told Reuters that Martinez was on her way to donate clothes when she learned from a community group that immigration agents were nearby. She began following a Border Patrol vehicle.
“I call her sort of a Paul Revere of today,” said Parente. “She’s trying to tell neighbors, ‘Hey, be careful.'”
In the criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court in Chicago, prosecutors said Martinez tailed the agents, repeatedly yelling “la migra,” a Spanish term for immigration authorities.
A statement released by DHS that day said nine other cars were also following the federal agents, including one driven by Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, who was also charged. Parente says Martinez was not acting in coordination with anyone else.
Parente said body camera footage from one of the border patrol agents in the car showed an agent saying “Do something, bitch” as Martinez drove alongside them, with the agent’s finger resting on the trigger of an assault rifle. DHS said Martinez and the other drivers “boxed in” the agents.
VEHICLES COLLIDE, THEN SHOTS FIRED
While prosecutors allege that Martinez drove her car at the border patrol agents’ vehicle and struck it, Parente said Martinez would show at trial that the federal agents actually struck her.
Parente said footage showed the driver of the border patrol vehicle turn the steering wheel to the left, toward Martinez’s vehicle. After the vehicles made contact, the agents stepped out and one fired at Martinez.
“Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed U.S. citizen,” DHS said in its statement.
Parente said Martinez left her gun in her purse on her passenger seat.
“This gun was never in her hand,” Parente said. Martinez holds a license to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Illinois, he added.
Parente said Martinez was shot five times by the border patrol agent. She drove away to an auto repair shop, where she called 911.
DHS initially misstated the location of the incident as Broadview, a Chicago suburb where protesters have scuffled with federal agents outside an immigration processing center. DHS also said Martinez drove herself to the hospital, but Parente and U.S. prosecutors said an ambulance transported her from the repair shop.
A preliminary hearing in the case was scheduled for Friday, Martinez’s lawyer said.
On September 12, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, 38, during an attempted arrest in the suburb of Franklin Park.
DHS also said in its statement that Villegas-Gonzalez drove his car at ICE agents, though surveillance video appeared to show him driving away.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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