The Franklin Mountains loom over Fort Bliss, a vast military installation in the desert on the outskirts of El Paso. Not the road where the shooting occurred.
(AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
A jail warden and his twin brother have been charged with shooting two migrants, one fatally.
The men were arrested Wednesday in Texas, The New York Times reported.
They have both been charged with manslaughter.
A local jail warden and his twin brother have been arrested and charged with manslaughter after being accused of opening fire on a group of migrants in west Texas, killing one and wounding another.
In a statement, provided to Insider, the Texas Department of Public Safety said that a preliminary investigation had found that a truck with two men inside had “pulled over and shot at” a group of immigrants who were “standing alongside the road getting water.” One man was shot and killed. A woman “was also shot and is now recovering at Del Sol Hospital in El Paso,” the department said.
Citing court documents, The New York Times reported that two brothers, Michael and Mark Sheppard, were arrested Wednesday.
Michael Sheppard was, until this week, a warden at the West Texas Detention Center in Sierra Blanca, Texas, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The detention center is a privately run, federal facility for detained immigrants.
In a statement to the Express-News, a spokesperson for LaSalle Corrections, which runs the detention center, said Michael Sheppard had been fired “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment.”
On Tuesday, the FBI El Paso field office issued a statement asking witnesses to come forward if they had any information related to a shooting of migrants in Sierra Blanca, according to the news outlet Border Report.