A Border Patrol Agent who was accused of running over a 34-year-old man on an Indian reservation near the southern Arizona border was framed by the tribal police, who backed the victim who made a phony video of the incident, according to a deposition in the case that recently surfaced.
Tohono O’odham Police Officer Marty Fuentes, then 72, testified in a deposition on June 28, 2018, that a veteran U.S. Border Patrol agent was falsely accused of the hit-and-run incident. Fuentes was a certified accident reconstructionist. He worked 32 years for the Tucson Police Department, before serving 12 years with the Tohono O’odham Police Department. His experience included the reconstruction of thousands of pedestrian vehicular accidents, including more than 2,000 fatalities.
“The only thing we saw, there was absolutely no damage to the vehicle. I knew that at that point in my past experience of vehicles hitting pedestrians that there would be some damage if it was done with a major part of the vehicle.”
The video that the alleged accident victim made – shown on CBS Nightly News on June 16, 2018 — sparked outrage and fueled the distrust between tribal members and Border Patrol agents that has existed for many years.
The video was presented to its national audience by CBS News as if this was actual evidence of a hit-and-run accident.
Fuentes, then a vehicular offences supervisor, was called to the scene of the alleged accident involving the agent and tribal member Paulo Remes.
The agent is not being named, because he was never charged with a crime. The deposition recently surfaced because the Border Patrol is pursuing possible disciplinary action against this agent – despite the fact that the agent clearly did nothing wrong, said Art Del Cueto, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council.
It is possible that the case has not been closed because there was widespread publicity surrounding the case. The Border Patrol has never released a statement clearing this agent of all wrongdoing.
The incident occurred at about 4 p.m. on June 14, 2018, near the town of Topawa, located on Federal Route 19, about 27 miles north of the International Border.
Remes claimed that the agent ran him over. The 37-second long video appeared to show Remes getting hit by a Border Patrol SUV driven by this agent. It was seen by nearly one million people after it was posted on social media shortly after the alleged incident.
The video ‑‑ which appears to be a clumsy attempt of falsifying an accident — shows a Border Patrol SUV driving toward the camera. Then the image shakes violently, as if the person holding the camera was hit by the vehicle.
As the vehicle drives off, the video shows the legs of a man lying in the roadway, as if the camera was being held by an accident victim.
“That vehicle was going 20, 25 miles an hour maybe. That’s a lot of momentum. It’s 8,000 pounds and if it hits something, it’s going to move it. In this case there wasn’t much there.”
The CBS News anchor reported to a national audience that “Remes and his family released a statement through community leaders saying he saw ‘the vehicle approaching near his grandparent’s home’ and that’s when he ‘started filming’ He says when he stepped into the road, ‘the driver accelerated toward him and struck him’. The CBS story clearly leads viewers to believe that the agent intentionally ran down this innocent pedestrian.
The CBS News anchor did not comment on why someone would stand in the middle of a roadway when a vehicle was approaching him.
“Tribal leaders say this is just one of many incidents where federal agents acted improperly on their land,” the CBS report said. “In 2003, the tribe says a Border Patrol agent ran over and killed a teenager on the reservation. The officer in that case was later cleared of any wrongdoing.”
In response to the Remes incident, Border Patrol officials told CBS News “We do not tolerate misconduct on or off duty and will fully cooperate with all investigations.”
Anyone looking at the video critically could surmise that it is a weak attempt to falsify evidence. However, CBS News, which used its story to promote the narrative that tribal members opposed a border wall, apparently jumped at the chance to falsely accuse a Border Patrol agent of an attempted murder of an innocent man.
The Tohono O’odham Nation, on reservations in South Central Arizona, west of Tucson and south of Phoenix, is composed of about 10,000 people on 4,400 square miles, almost the size of Connecticut.
“And then Chief Irby pulled me aside and he says, ‘Well, we’re impounding it because we want to stick it to the Border Patrol,’ or those basic words,” Fuentes testified.
The deposition tells a different story
In the deposition of Fuentes, who died one year later of apparent natural causes, the veteran officer was questioned by Sean Chapman, the attorney representing the agent.
Fuentes testified that he went to a Tohono O’odham Police station to view the video within hours of the incident, along with other officers. The accused agent and other Border Patrol agents were at the station. The pedestrian who took the video was at a hospital in Sells, about 15 miles from the accident scene.
Fuentes said he investigated many crashes for the Border Patrol. As they waited to iron out technical difficulties connected with viewing the video, Fuentes examined the SUV involved in the incident, the deposition said.
Fuentes reported that he saw smudges near the windshield support on the passenger’s side, “not more than a handprint.” There was slight evidence that someone tapped the side of the vehicle.
“The only thing we saw, there was absolutely no damage to the vehicle,” Fuentes told the attorney. “So I knew that at that point in my past experience of vehicles hitting pedestrians that there would be some damage if it was done with a major part of the vehicle.
“That vehicle was going 20, 25 miles an hour maybe. That’s a lot of momentum. It’s 8,000 pounds and if it hits something, it’s going to move it. In this case there wasn’t much there.”
Fuentes said that as he was examining the vehicle, members of the Border Patrol Critical Incident Team were about to take photographs of the vehicle. Then several top officials of the Tohono O’odham Police Department –- including Assistant Police Chief Rodney Irby –- began yelling at the Border Patrol agents with loud and angry voices to “get away from the vehicle,” because “they were going to photograph” the vehicle.
Fuentes testified that he had told the Border Patrol investigators that they had his permission to photograph the vehicle, and it was his case. He was surprised that the tribal officers were upset that the investigators wanted to document the condition of the vehicle.
“I was about ready to tell the agents to go ahead and start your photographs when Lieutenant Dailey came out screaming along with Chief Irby and Chief May and they started yelling at the Border Patrol to get away from the vehicle,” Fuentes testified.
The tribal officers were also yelling that they were going to impound the vehicle. Fuentes said he should have been the one to decide whether the vehicle should be impounded.
Fuentes said that surprised him and he asked them, “Hey, what’s going on? I don’t understand this?”
“And then Chief Irby pulled me aside and he says, ‘Well, we’re impounding it because we want to stick it to the Border Patrol,’ or those basic words,” Fuentes testified.
Fuentes said he was thinking of impounding it himself, in order to get a reading from the Crash Data Retrieval Unit, the equivalent of an aircraft black box, which records data about a crash.
But unlike actual accidents, in which there is damage to a vehicle and possible injuries, Fuentes saw no reason to examine the black box.
“It was such a minor case, there was no physical evidence on the vehicle to say it had hit anything,” Fuentes said.
As he was deciding whether to impound the vehicle to take readings from the data retrieval unit, the other police officials overruled him.
In the deposition, Fuentes explained that he had a computer program, which shows the momentum of a vehicle, which is calculated by multiplying the weight of the vehicle times the speed.
“And if anything at that speed hits someone, it’s going to hurt them and there was no damage to-, or no injury to the person, as far as I know.”
Fuentes said he also visited the crash scene. From the evidence of the tire marks and heel marks at the scene, Fuentes concluded that the alleged victim “either pushed off the vehicle or the vehicle just, just sideswiped him and he pushed off.”
Who videotapes a vehicle as it is running him over?
When asked about the video, Fuentes said he was surprised that the alleged victim videotaped that event.
“That was a red flag,” Fuentes said. “Why was he doing that?”
Fuentes testified that the alleged victim got in front of the vehicle and then the vehicle came by him.
“And from my summation from the dynamics I saw, he didn’t get hit by the vehicle, the main portion. It may have been a slight brush but he wasn’t hit by the vehicle to where he could have been badly injured,” Fuentes said. “I’m thinking that he maybe pushed off the vehicle. It was more evident that he-, the vehicle as it was going by, he pushed away. And then when he falls, he continues videotaping.”
Attorney Chapman asked Fuentes if it appeared that Remes was intentionally putting himself in harm’s way.
“He crossed the path as the vehicle was coming toward him and that is another red flag,” Fuentes said. “I don’t know why. I had more questions to ask this guy but never had a chance.”
Fuentes said that Tohono O’odham Police Sgt. Cook told him that two days earlier Remes had confronted another officer, after they sought him in response to a call about a suicidal person. At that time, Remes was yelling and videotaping officers. It turned out that Remes was not the suicidal person the officers were looking for, but he was the one who yelled at them and videotaped them.
Another officer told Fuentes that Remes confronted him on a couple of prior occasions.
Remes stepped in front of the officer’s vehicle in one of those incidents and said, “Run me over, run me over.” Remes was operating his video camera at that time also.
A group calling itself Indigenous Americans posted the video with the title Border Patrol Agent Runs Over Native American – Tohono O’odham Nation