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Family of Slain Border Agent Brian Terry Sues Federal Officials Over ‘Fast and Furious’

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PHOENIX (TheBlaze/AP) — The family of a slain Border Patrol agent has sued federal officials over the botched “Fast and Furious” gun operation.

Agent Brian Terry was mortally wounded on Dec. 14, 2010, in a firefight north of the Arizona-Mexico border between U.S. agents and five men who had sneaked into the country to rob marijuana smugglers.

Federal authorities conducting “Fast and Furious” have faced tough criticism for allowing suspected straw gun buyers for a smuggling ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest them and seize weapons. Further, there were no solid tracking mechanisms to trace the guns once they crossed into Mexico.

The lawsuit filed Thursday and made publicly available on Friday came from Terry’s parents against six managers and investigators for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The family also sued a federal prosecutor who had previously handled the case but is no longer on it, and the owner of the gun store where two rifles found in the firefight’s aftermath were bought.

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Fox: Long-awaited ‘Furious’ Report Places Blame on ATF, Justice

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Dozens of senior-level U.S. government officials turned a blind eye to public safety as they pursued an ill-conceived and poorly managed investigation into gun trafficking in Mexico, according to a long-awaited inspector general’s report on Operation Fast and Furious.

Portions of the Justice Department IG report, which has not been made public, were obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel.

The report and accompanying accounts cite a failure in leadership and a lack of accountability and oversight up and down the chain of command at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Justice Department itself and other offices. It says many senior executives knew the U.S. was helping traffic guns to Mexico that killed people but did nothing to stop it.

“We found no evidence in Operation Fast and Furious that the ATF or the (U.S. attorney’s office) attempted at any point during the investigation to balance the risks to the public safety against the long-term benefits of identifying trafficking networks and participants,” the draft report says.

Fast and Furious was the anti-gunrunning sting that helped send some 2,000 assault weapons to Mexico under the guise of stopping illegal trafficking. The operation ended only after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — two of the weapons associated with the investigation were found at his murder scene.

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Five men indicted for shooting death of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry

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Five men were named Monday in a federal grand jury indictment unsealed in Tucson, Ariz., in the December 2010 shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, with the FBI announcing a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of four of the men designated as fugitives.

The Terry death has been the catalyst for a heated debate between the Justice Department and Congress over Fast and Furious – a botched gun-running investigation in which two weapons purchased by “straw buyers” during the probe were found at the scene of the Terry shooting, just north of the Arizona-Mexico border.

The Justice Department’s refusal to turn over hundreds of pages of Fast and Furious documents led to a contempt citation by the House against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

According to the indictment, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Lionel Portillo-Meza are charged with first- and second-degree murder, conspiracy, robbery, use and carrying of a firearm during a crime of violence, assault on a federal officer and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. A sixth man, Rito Osorio-Arellanes, is charged with conspiracy.

The indictment, handed up by a federal grand jury on Nov. 7, 2011, alleges that on Dec. 14, 2010, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, Favela-Astorga, Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Portillo-Meza engaged in a firefight with four Border Patrol agents and during that exchange, Terry was fatally shot.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: bill85704