"Border Agents In Likely 'Friendly Fire' Were About 20 Yards Apart"by Cindy Carcamo and Richard Marosi

In the Los Angeles Times there is an article about a Border Patrol Agent that was killed because of a shooting in Southeastern Arizona. In a rugged canyon three agents including the victim Nicholas J. Ivie were involved in a shooting that included on the three agents, whom were responding to a tripped sensor. Officials say that the three agents responded to the tripped sensor from different directions in a dark canyon and misinterpreted their colleagues actions on approach. FBI officials say that the shooting was most likely a 'friendly fire' that killed one agent, injured another, and one was not harmed. Ivie was a six year agent, who was patrolling the area with two other agents when he was shot. The area they were patrolling was a few miles north of the US Mexico border, where drugs and human smuggling occurs. Ivie had communicated with the two other agents, and they were all in the same area, but Ivie was twenty yards away from the two agents and interpreted their defensive postures for aggressive ones. George McCubbin, union president of the National Border Patrol Council, elaborated. He said, "Agents converged from opposite directions, descending down hills into a relatively level area thick with brush." “They were dropping down into this saddle area, coming in from two different sides,” “This happened between 1 and 2 in the morning, and then with all the brush they may have never even seen each other…maybe they tried to reach each other but couldn’t. They have lots of dead spots in the desert.” A high-powered rifle and a handgun were found at the scene but investigators are not sure if it is connected to this incident. A .223 Bushmaster rifle was discovered on Wednesday in the area where the agent was murdered, and it says that the weapon was purchased in the United States. A .38-caliber Titan Tiger revolver was recovered on Tuesday and included this alert, “Urgent High Profile Border Agent Shot.”(La Times). That weapon was purchased February of 2009 in Tucson.