Resident shoots illegal alien
in self-defense
Originally published here
as:
Arizonan shoots, hits hiding border crosser
April 08, 2001
TUCSON - A rural Arizona resident who surprised
a group of undocumented immigrants hiding in a travel trailer in his back yard
said he shot and wounded one of them.
"I feel bad for these people, they're in a
bad situation, but they put us in a bad situation, too. I was afraid for my
life," said Wayne Lockridge, a Bisbee real estate agent whose home is three
miles north of the Mexico-Arizona border.
Desiderio Gomar Valadez, 45, of La Torrecella,
Guanajuato, was airlifted to a Tucson hospital.
Jeff Phillips, a doctor at Copper Queen
Hospital in Bisbee, told Mexican Consul Miguel Escobar Valdez that the bullet
entered through the back of the immigrant's left shoulder and went through the
left jaw and passed into the sinus cavity.
Lockridge told authorities he didn't remember
shooting. He said he found the group of 10 to 12 people while investigating a
broken window in the 8-by-15-foot trailer.
"They probably came in from the
cold," Lockridge said.
About 400 undocumented immigrants turned
themselves into authorities as rain and cold swept the border area Thursday
night and Friday. Temperatures ranged from the 30s into the 50s.
Lockridge said he had felt whoever broke the
window probably was gone "but I took my .38 revolver with me as a
precaution. When I opened the door of the trailer, it was packed with
people."
"Then one of them turned toward me and I
saw a knife and the gun went off," he said. "I don't remember
shooting, I must have been in shock. I started screaming and yelling and they
started screaming, then they just took off."
Lockridge said he reported the break-in to the
Border Patrol. Agents found the wounded man a short time later about a mile
north of the Lockridge home.
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