Family believes substance in Houston ICE shooting van is salt, attorney says, countering FBI suspicion of drugs
By Jason Hanna, Lauren Mascarenhas, Norma Galeana, Ed Lavandera, CNN
(CNN) — A substance collected from the van in which Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Houston last week likely was salt, an attorney for the slain man’s brother said she believes, countering the FBI’s previous assertions that the substance could be drugs.
Thursday’s statement from attorney Ruby Powers came hours after the district attorney in Texas’ Harris County also said he believed the substance wasn’t drugs. And even if it was, the prosecutor said, it should have no bearing on investigations into whether the killing of 52-year-old Salgado Araujo during an attempted traffic stop on July 7 was justified, or whether the stop of the Mexican immigrant and his three passengers was warranted.
This comes days after the FBI filed a warrant application saying the agency has cause to believe that an investigator – after the shooting – found illegal drugs in the vehicle longtime Texas resident Salgado Araujo had been driving.
“After consulting with my client and his family, our understanding is that this (substance) was granulated salt,” Powers, an attorney for Victor Salgado, one of the three passengers, said in a release. Such salt “is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat,” she said.
Harris County prosecutors also don’t believe the substance was drugs, District Attorney Sean Teare told Kate Bolduan on “CNN News Central” Thursday morning, citing “information that we’re not going to release yet.”
“Based on the information we have regarding who Mr. Salgado was and just eyeballing the evidence as it was collected yesterday, we don’t believe that they are drugs,” Teare said.
Teare said he believes the substance would be tested by the FBI “either today or in the next few days.”
The FBI declined to comment on what Powers and Teare said.
The substance’s nature also should have “no bearing on why Mr. Salgado and the other three individuals (in the van) were targeted,” and have “no bearing whatsoever on whether or not the use of force that killed Mr. Salgado was justified,” Teare said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s initial statement on Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s fatal shooting – that Salgado Araujo rammed a law enforcement vehicle and an agent fired a gun in self-defense – has faced scrutiny. The officers involved were not wearing body-worn cameras.
Salgado Araujo was one of two people fatally shot this month by federal officers during immigration enforcement operations. The shootings in Houston and Maine reignited criticism of ICE tactics.
FBI’s drug claim came in court document
A week after the shooting, the FBI filed a warrant application saying it has cause to believe illegal drugs were in the vehicle Salgado Araujo was driving.
The application cites probable cause for “distribution, manufacturing, or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and simple possession of a controlled substance.”
In the warrant affidavit authored by FBI Special Agent David McNielly on Tuesday and submitted to a federal magistrate judge, the agent described arriving on scene after the shooting and allegedly observing small plastic bags “with a white crystal-like substance” in the white cargo van. McNielly said he made the observations from outside of the van.
“The packaging and appearance of the controlled substance in the target vehicle is consistent with methamphetamine,” the warrant states. However, it does not explicitly say who the bags are believed to belong to. Included within the warrant are two images of the bags that appear to be on the vehicle’s dashboard. CNN has reached out to the FBI about whether the contents of the bags have been confirmed or sent for screening.
The warrant was served Wednesday, and members of Teare’s office observed while the evidence was collected from the vehicle, Teare said. FBI agents were involved in Wednesday’s vehicle search, Houston Mayor John Whitmire told CNN.
Federal and state officials are investigating shooting
ICE said Salgado Arajuo, who was driving with three members of his construction crew on their way to work, was shot around 7 a.m. July 7 after he tried to evade arrest as agents tried to stop the vehicle during a “targeted enforcement operation.”
The agency did not specify whether Salgado Arajuo was the intended target, but a source with preliminary details about the incident said he was not.
ICE agents were watching a target’s address and saw a van drive away with a person who resembled the target, a Homeland Security official told CNN.
The van was registered to Salgado Araujo, who agents determined to be in the country illegally, the source with preliminary details about the incident said. ICE vehicles attempted to block the van, which struck at least one of the vehicles, the source said.
ICE said Salgado Araujo rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow several verbal commands before an ICE agent fired his weapon in self-defense. Salgado Araujo later died at a hospital.
Men who were in Salgado Araujo’s work van say ICE’s version of events is false, attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra and US Rep. Sylvia Garcia said. Two of the men told Garcia the agents’ vehicles bumped into them and then swayed into the van, forcing them to stop. The agents never identified themselves to the men, they told Garcia.
The men told Garcia agents had exited their vehicles and run toward the van, she told CNN. They pulled out the passengers as one of the agents fired one shot at Salgado Araujo, she said they told her.
The three passengers, including Salgado Arajuo’s brother, were detained, according to his family. Details on whether any of the three were intended targets of the traffic stop, and exact details about their immigration status, weren’t immediately available.
But Teare’s office certified requests for U visas for the three. Such visas allow foreign nationals without any official status in the US to stay in the country in certain circumstances when they’re witnesses to alleged crimes. The office regularly certifies U visa requests for material witnesses, a spokesperson with Teare’s office told CNN on Wednesday.
The DHS Office of the Inspector General is leading an investigation into the shooting, according to ICE. And the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Texas Rangers said Wednesday it would investigate the shooting alongside the OIG and the FBI, and that it “will have access to all available evidence” collected by the federal agencies.
The ACLU of Texas, which is working closely with Salgado Araujo’s family, said, “The Trump administration lacks credibility to investigate itself, and we should be skeptical of any claims until a full independent investigation is complete.”
The Harris County district attorney’s office is pursuing its own investigation, “looking directly at the actions of that agent, and when we get to the end … we will make a charging decision,” Teare said Thursday.
Salgado Araujo was living in the US without legal permission, ICE said. He had lived in the US for nearly 35 years, raising three sons with his wife and building homes in the Houston suburbs, one of his sons told reporters. He submitted an application for a work permit and was “close to obtaining his legal status,” the son said.
DA questions warrant’s unsealing
Teare, the district attorney, said Thursday he was concerned about the motives for the warrant’s unsealing. While not unheard of, it is unusual for an FBI search warrant to be publicly available during an active and high-profile investigation of this nature.
The federal court docket appears to show the warrant was initially sealed when it was filed Tuesday, shielding its contents from public view, but it was later unsealed. The filing came two days before a public viewing for Salgado Araujo, and three days before his funeral.
Law enforcement had not searched the vehicle prior to filing the warrant, McNielly wrote.
To date, the Department Homeland Security has not indicated that the ICE agents who stopped Salgado Araujo had any knowledge of drugs possibly being inside the vehicle at the time of the fatal shooting.
“A search warrant does not equate to guilt. An unidentified substance is not a confirmed narcotic. We are requesting that the substance testing be expedited so that their names can be cleared. But no test result, whatever it ultimately shows, will change the fact that deadly force was used against Lorenzo. You cannot shoot first and ask questions later,” Powers said.
The medical examiner ruled that Salgado Araujo’s death was caused by a gunshot to the torso, and officials have not released toxicology information describing any substances in his system at the time of death.
Teare is concerned “that the federal government is going to try to use the fact that they believe narcotics … was present in the car to try to remove (the passengers in Salgado Araujo’s van) from the country, which is one of the reasons that we’ve already certified that all three of those individuals are material witnesses in a death investigation,” Teare said Thursday.
CNN has asked the Department of Justice for comment on the allegations in the warrant, why the warrant information was made public, and whether it was unsealed at the request of federal prosecutors. CNN has not yet received a response.
The president of the LULAC Adelante PAC, a political group that supports Latino voter participation and candidates, accused federal investigators of trying to “change the public discourse and prejudice a jury in Harris County.”
“It just smells of a smear campaign and a cover up,” Domingo Garcia said Wednesday.
CNN’s Josh Campbell, Holmes Lybrand and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.
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