[thallub]

Latest Border patrol shooting - friendly fire?

Sure does appear that way. Way i read it Ivie may have fired on his fellow agents.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/n...tory?track=rss

Three agents fired unknowingly at each other after they separately responded to a tripped sensor in a rugged canyon in southeastern Arizona, Cochise County Acting Sheriff Rod Rothrock told The Times on Saturday.

FBI officials said a preliminary investigation showed that Border Agent Nicholas J. Ivie died in a "friendly fire" shooting that only involved the agents. Another agent was shot in the buttocks and ankle and is recovering at home. A third agent was not injured. Authorities have not released their names.

Ivie, a six-year agent, was shot while he and two other colleagues on horseback patrolled an area a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, between Naco and Bisbee. The area is considered a corridor for drug and human smuggling near the Mule Mountains.

The three agents had communicated with each other and knew they were all in the area. Ivie was about 20 yards away from the other two agents and “interpreted defensive postures from the other as aggressive postures,” Rothrock told the Arizona Daily Star, an account he confirmed with The Times.
George McCubbin, union president of the National Border Patrol Council, elaborated. He said the agents converged from opposite directions, descending down hills into a relatively level area thick with brush.