U.S. immigration authorities have altered their account of the Border Patrol’s recent fatal shooting of Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles, a 20-year-old woman who had traveled from Guatemala to Texas to help pay for her education. After the shooting on Wednesday, Customs and Border Protection released a statement saying a lone Border Patrol agent was responding to a report of illegal activity near a culvert in Rio Bravo, Texas, when he “came under attack by multiple subjects using blunt objects.”“The agent fired at least one round from his service issued firearm, fatally wounding one of the assailants,” the statement read, referring to Gómez Gonzáles, a Maya-Mam indigenous woman. Two days later, the agency canceled a scheduled news conference about the shooting and instead released a new statement with a different version of events, according to CNN. The new statement, issued Friday, had no mention of “blunt objects” and claimed the agent ordered a group of immigrants to “get on the ground,” but they ignored his commands and “instead rushed him.”The second statement also referred to Gómez Gonzáles as “one member of the group” instead of “assailant,” the term the agency used on Wednesday. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment on its two different accounts of the shooting.

Source: Huffington Post May 27, 2018 01:18 UTC