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A police officer from the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas faces a murder charge for his role in the killing of an underage teenager he allegedly mistook for a gunman. He and five other officers are also charged with planting evidence to cover up the incident.

Last week, the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s office arrested six police officers identified only by their first names as Juan Jesus, Omar Magdiel, Dario, Miguel Angel, Quintin, and Osiel. Two other officers remain at large.

According to prosecutors, Quintin, who is believed to be the one who fired the deadly shots at 15-year-old Pedro Israel, is facing one charge of murder, one charge of unlawful conduct as an officer, and one charge of covering up a crime. The other five officers are facing charges of covering up the crime and unlawful conduct as an officer.

The arrest of the officers comes almost a month after they allegedly shot and killed Pedro Israel. The teen was driving his mother’s white SUV to a local gas station in Reynosa when the shooting broke out. The officer allegedly mistook the teen for a gunman and shot him. Then, they planted weapons and road spikes inside the vehicle to make it seem like the teen had taken part in a shootout with authorities, prosecutors revealed.

In the days after the initial shooting, Tamaulipas Public Security Secretary Sergio Hernando Chavez went off the initial information and publicly defended his officers, claiming that they had defended themselves from a group of gunmen, including the teenager.

The case bears striking similarities to a 2021 case where a squad of Tamaulipas police officers mistook a convoy of human smugglers for cartel gunmen and shot at them, killing 19 victims, including 17 migrants and two human smugglers. As Breitbart Texas reported, in that case, the officers set the victim’s bodies and vehicles on fire and claimed that they had stumbled into the remnants of a shootout between rival cartel gunmen. Ultimately, authorities arrested 12 officers who received a 50-year sentence in 2023.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.