Neighbors wake to news of deadly shooting by off-duty border patrol agent

SAN ANTONIO – A deadly shooting by an off-duty U. S. Border Patrol agent early Friday morning has left people at one West Side apartment complex a bit rattled.

San Antonio police say the agent told officers it happened after he interrupted a car burglary at the complex, located near Ingram Road and Highway 151, around 2 a.m.

The agent told police he caught that man and three others breaking into a vehicle and confronted them. He said one man pointed a handgun at him, while someone else shot at him. The agent said he pulled his own weapon, hitting the man in his left armpit.

Police say the burglary suspects then carried the wounded man to a car and drove off. Investigators later learned he had been dropped off at a hospital, where he died.

Back at the apartment complex, Brian Malott and his wife were trying to make sense of the gunfire that woke them up. “She jumped up and went to the window. I said, ‘Babe, hit the ground. Go! Get down!’,” he said.

A few minutes later, Malott said he heard his neighbor, the border patrol agent, calling to him from outside. “He told me, he said ‘Neighbor, someone was in your truck. Come out quick.’ So I came out. He had already, he got one of them,” Malott said.

As it turned out, Malott’s pickup is the vehicle the suspects had targeted. He says they took a gun from the center console in his truck. He believes it is the same weapon the man pointed at the agent just before he was shot.

“The gun was laying here in a pool of blood,” he said, pointing to a wet spot on the ground.

Others, meanwhile, slept through the entire commotion, but woke later to the news. Matthew Rios said he was surprised by the shooting, but not by the car break-ins.

“It’s definitely been a problem here,” Rios said. He said a relative who also lives in the complex had her vehicle burglarized several times recently.

Rios said just Thursday morning, he discovered his car had been stolen.

“Walked up to the parking space and there’s glass all over the floor and then the car was gone,” he said. While the break-ins may not have been unexpected for Rios, he says the deadly outcome did come as a bit of a shock.