Family Grieves as Border Patrol Changes Shooting Account

The Guatemalan family of a young woman killed by a Border Patrol agent says they want justice—but the events leading to her death aren't totally clear, NBC News reports. "Why did they do this to her?" the mother of Claudia Patricia Gómez González, 19, tells Telemundo between sobs. "They should have just sent her back home." González was apparently shot dead last week by a US Border Patrol Agent in Rio Bravo, Texas, close to the Mexican border. US Customs and Border Protection initially said a group of migrants assailed the agent with "blunt objects" and he fired back, "fatally wounding one of the assailants," but an updated release says the migrants "ignored his verbal commands and instead rushed him," so he fired off a shot, "striking one member of the group."

A woman who lives next to the shooting gave her own version of events and posted a Facebook video of the aftermath, the New York Times reports. "There was no weapon" the migrants could have used, says Marta Martinez. "They were hiding." Martinez adds that she "didn't hear any yelling or 'stop' or 'don't run.'" The FBI and Texas Rangers are investigating the shooting as the agent, still unnamed, remains on administrative leave, CNN reports. As for González, she had traveled almost three weeks from her home in San Juan Ostuncalco, Guatemala, to earn money to reunite with her boyfriend. "This is not the first person dying in the United States," her aunt said at a news conference Friday. "There are many people that have been treated like animals and that isn’t what we should do as people." (More illegal immigration stories.)