Two Brothers In Texas Arrested After Allegedly Shooting Two Migrants and Killing One of Them
Two brothers from Texas have been arrested in connection with a shooting that left one migrant dead and another hospitalized in El Paso. According to ABC News, the Texas Department of Public Safety is working with the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Rangers and FBI to investigate the incident.
Texas DPS confirmed that one male migrant was shot and killed while another migrant, a female, was sent to a hospital in El Paso, where she is currently recovering from her injuries.
Two suspects have been taken into custody, one of them being Mike Sheppard, who previously worked as a warden at West Texas Detention Center, which worked closely with ICE and is used to house migrant detainees, reports CBS News.
A spokesperson for the detention center confirmed that the former warden was discharged “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment” but would not confirm whether or not the warden in question was, in fact, Sheppard. He was arrested alongside his brother Mark Sheppard, according to local jail records.
A preliminary report claims that the two migrants hid from the Sheppard brothers as they approached them in their vehicle. The driver of the vehicle, Mike, then exited the car and leaned a weapon against his hood before firing two shots at the migrants, striking one of them in the stomach and then the other, who died on the scene.
According to affidavits filed after the incident, the two men shouted something in Spanish and revved the engine.
Once in police custody, abc reports both men had a hard time keeping their story straight, with Mike electing to stay quiet while Mark initially said he was never at the scene before admitting the two men were hunting, “looking for ducks” before he “changed it to birds, and then to Javelina’s.”
Ultimately, Mark admitted that Mike fired two rounds from a shotgun. In his retelling of events, Mark also changed the phrasing of what he asked Mike after firing the two rounds from “did you get him?” to “did you get it?” attempting to convince investigators that the target was, in fact, an animal instead of a human being.
Univision reports that a 2018 investigation detailing Mike Sheppard’s time at West Texas Detention Center reveals multiple human rights cases of abuse and estimates that more than 80 men were seriously harmed under Sheppard’s watch.
According to the Washington Post, conditions at the facility were so bad that ICE moved to terminate its relationship with WTCD in 2018, using it briefly in 2019 due to a lack of detention space. “Corporate would have to step in,” said an official with the Department of Homeland Security. The facility now detains migrants for the US Marshals.
