HOUSTON, July 10 (Reuters) - Three men who witnessed the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a U.S. agent in Houston on Tuesday have challenged the explanation offered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a lawyer for two of the witnesses told reporters in a press conference on Friday.
The three witnesses, including Salgado's brother, are being held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas. They were riding to work with Salgado in his white van on Tuesday morning when they were pulled
over by ICE officers. Their attorney, Hugo Baldero-Ybera, said they have given him a "completely different" account of what happened that day.
He demanded that the men be released immediately to "ensure the integrity" of the investigation into the incident. He also expressed concern that the government would pressure them to sign paperwork allowing for their deportation.
The shooting sparked protests in Houston's heavily Hispanic East End. More than 1,000 people marched peacefully through the neighborhood on Wednesday and residents have laid flowers and candles at the scene.
Hours after the incident on Tuesday, ICE said in a statement that Salgado, a Mexican national living in the U.S. illegally for more than three decades, rammed a law enforcement vehicle with his van and attempted to run over an officer, who then fired on him in self-defense. The agency has not provided evidence to corroborate its version of events.
"At no point was there ever an agent directly in front of the vehicle, nor was an agent ever placed in the line of danger," said Baldero-Ybera, summarizing his clients' accounts. The men also told him that the fatal shots came from the side of the van rather than the front, Baldero-Ybera added.
ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
NOT THE TARGET
Salgado was not the target of the ICE operation that ended in his death, a DHS official told Reuters on Friday.
Weeks before the shooting, while conducting surveillance, immigration agents noticed two white vans at the property of their intended target, the official said. On Tuesday morning, on their way back to that address, they saw a white van "with an individual who resembled the target" and initiated the vehicle stop, the official said.
Salgado's "only crime was he fit the description of another man they were looking for," Baldero-Ybera said.
Family members, local activists and members of the U.S. Congress have demanded an independent investigation into Salgado's killing. The father of three was a construction worker who had lived in Houston for 35 years and was in the process of obtaining a work permit, relatives said on Wednesday.
The full circumstances of Tuesday's fatal encounter remained unclear.
Surveillance footage first reported on by local CBS affiliate KHOU11 shows an unmarked ICE vehicle appearing to cut off Salgado's van in traffic, then shows the van pulling over to the side of the road.
Other verified videos have emerged from the aftermath of the shooting. In one, agents are seen standing over a man clutching his chest. In another, a man can be heard crying out in pain. No footage has yet surfaced that captures the moment of the shooting.
The Trump administration moved last year to slow-walk a pilot program to give ICE officers body cameras, urging Congress to cut funding by 75%, Reuters reported in January. DHS said on Thursday that none of the officers involved in the incident were wearing one.
There were also no dashboard cameras in the ICE vehicles that captured the shooting, Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia said at the press conference on Friday. And there was no clear timeline for the investigation, which ICE said would be led by DHS.
The Harris County District Attorney has appealed to the public to come forward with videos, photos and eyewitness accounts, but stressed that federal authorities were handling all aspects of the case.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Evan Garcia in Houston and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and David Gregorio)
