Ten people arrested in the shooting of a police officer at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas were charged on Monday with attempted murder.
The shooting occurred on the Fourth of July after people set off fireworks at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, and vandalized vehicles parked at the center, which is about 28 miles south of Fort Worth. The episode came as nationwide demonstrations, some festive, took place against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and other policies.
The 10 people were each charged with three counts of attempted murder of a federal officer, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. They also each faced three counts of discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
The officer, who was wounded in the neck, was discharged from a hospital, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office said on Sunday. The officer was not identified.
The 10 people identified in the complaint are Cameron Arnold, Savanna Batten, Nathan Baumann, Zachary Evetts, Joy Gibson, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Seth Sikes, Elizabeth Soto and Ines Soto. Nine of the defendants are from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and one is from College Station, Texas.
An 11th person, Daniel Rolando Sanchez, was expected to be charged separately in the case. At a news conference on Monday night, officials said a person tied to the case had been charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy for attempting to conceal and destroy evidence, but it was not clear if that person was Mr. Sanchez.
The acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Nancy E. Larson, said in a statement on Tuesday that the events on Friday night were “an ambush on federal and local law enforcement officers.”
Court documents did not name lawyers for the defendants.
According to the criminal complaint, the events leading to the charges began on Friday at 10:37 p.m., when about 10 to 12 people shot fireworks toward the detention center. Ten minutes later, one or two people separated from the group and tagged vehicles and a guard structure with graffiti, writing “Ice pig” on one car and “traitor” on another.
Around 10:58 p.m., two unarmed correctional officers tried to talk to the two people who had damaged the cars, court records said.
At about the same time, an officer from the Alvarado Police Department arrived at the detention center’s parking lot, according to court records. After the officer got out of a vehicle, a person who was in the woods next to the center opened fire, wounding the officer in the neck. Another person, standing near an intersection just outside the woods, shot at the correctional officers, the criminal complaint said. Investigators said they later found spent 5.56-caliber casings, which are typically used with AR-15-style rifles, where both of the shooters had been.
A detective from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office who was heading to the detention center pulled over a 2007 Hyundai van that had fled the scene, court records said. The driver was Bradford Morris, also identified in charging documents as Meagan Morris, who told police officers of meeting people online and bringing them to the detention center to “make some noise.”
Inside the van, police officers found a pistol, two AR-15-style rifles, two Kevlar ballistic-style vests and a ballistic helmet, court records said.
At about 11:10 p.m., officers found seven other people on foot at an intersection about 300 yards west of where the shooting happened, court records said. Some were armed and wearing black military-style clothing and body armor.
Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who is a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, said that prosecutors had two routes to charge with attempted murder the members of the group who had not shot at the officers.
If the defendants are found to have aided and abetted an attempted murder, they can face the charge. Or the attempted murder can be prosecuted as a conspiracy if it is shown that it was a coordinated action.
“It’s an unusually large alleged conspiracy, and a lot of people working in coordination if the allegations are true,” Professor Osler said.
Amanda Holpuch covers breaking news and other topics.
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