CHULA VISTA, California (AP) — The family of a 32-year-old mother of five shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent as he rode on her car's hood in suburban San Diego has filed a wrongful death claim against the agency, saying the agent had a long history of misconduct in a previous law enforcement job and should not have been on the street.
Attorney Eugene Iredale filed the claim Friday with the Border Patrol on behalf of Valeria "Munique" Tachiquin Alvarado and provided a copy to The Associated Press.
The documents, a required precursor for a lawsuit, say the agent, 34-year-old Justin Tackett, was suspended four times for misconduct including crashing a patrol car and violating suspects' rights in the nearly four years that he worked as an Imperial County sheriff's deputy. Tackett had been given a notice that he'd be fired just before he quit the job in 2003, the documents say.
In one 2002 probation case, according to the claim, Tackett "willfully disobeyed a direct order" and "provided false and misleading information during the investigation."
In a different incident in 2001, Tackett was called to assist police in Brawley with an incident and told to wait for them at the scene but instead rousted the suspect himself, engaged him in an altercation and cuffed him without a warrant.
The Border Patrol, which has not released Tackett's name or answered questions about him, declined comment, and a phone listing for Tackett or an attorney representing him could not be found.
But in a wrongful termination suit he filed in 2004, Tackett claimed he was the victim of retaliation for pursuing cases against supervisors' friends and of racial discrimination because he was white.
On Sept. 28, authorities say Alvarado left an apartment in Chula Vista where border agents were serving a warrant against someone else, and say she deliberately ran into Tackett, who shot her out of fear for his life after being forced to ride on the hood for several hundred yards (meters) as he asked her to stop.
Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union, said he was confident Tackett did the right thing in the incident.
"If the agent says his life was threatened and he needed to use deadly force, we're going to back him and accept his statement at face value," Moran told the newspaper U-T San Diego, which first reported the Alvarado family claim.
The FBI and Chula Vista police are investigating the incident.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
Comments
I've always felt that people
I've always felt that people who become in any type of law enforcement looses all their ethics. I feel the family is the right by filing the wrongful claim. I mean look at the track record of the officer involved in this indecent. He had four counts of misconduct and these events were over 8 years ago and yet he was able to become a Boarder Patrolmen. The investigation needs to be on going and more through background checks need to be done on future Patrolmen.
Agreed, law enforcement
Agreed, law enforcement officials tend to often lose their heads and let the power overwhelm them. However, there is no reason that this official should still be employed after having four counts of misconduct on his resume. Once or twice, ok but really, 4 counts of misconduct? That’s unacceptable! For California Boarder Patrol’s lack of authority and punishment of their officers, there are five children who have to forever endure the hardships of living without a mother. The way the officer reacted even if the woman was intentionally trying to hurt him is still extremely unacceptable. Let us say I was on my way to campus and a vehicle suddenly strikes me, my first reaction would not be to get out and of my car and shoot the student who struck me. I agree with the statement above that the U.S Border patrol really needs to carry out stricter background checks on prospective officials .
Strong issues
There are some very prevalent issues here. I read both the comments prior to mine and although I do believe that there are many law enforcement officials that do loose their ethics when they obtain that badge, I do not believe that all of them do. In this specific case, I do believe that there is some legality in the pursuit of justice. The officer does has quite the track records and it makes you wonder how he can still maintain the position he does. Maybe all along that is where the problem lies. You have these law enforcement officials that are being supervised by leaders who have lost their ethics and/or morals. Maybe it is time that the leadership start setting an example in not allowing for law enforcement to continue to rack up the rap sheet that this officer has...