Texas man linked to border attack
Gun was one of three fired on agents
A gun used in a fatal attack on a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Mexico last month has been traced to a Texas man suspected of attempting to deliver at least 40 firearms to a Mexican drug cartel, federal authorities said Tuesday.
Thomas Crowley, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Dallas, said the weapon was one of three used in the Feb. 15 attack on agent Jaime Zapata and his partner, Victor Avila, who survived.
The Romanian-made AK-47 was purchased at a Texas gun store in October by Otilio Osorio, 22 — a man federal authorities began investigating in connection with suspected weapons purchases on behalf of Mexican drug lords a month after the rifle was bought.
The discovery marked the second time in recent months that a federal agent has been killed by a gun linked to suspected arms traffickers in the U.S.
In December, two assault weapons found at the scene of a shootout near Nogales, Ariz., that killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry were subsequently found to have been purchased at a gun store in Glendale, Ariz., earlier in 2010.
The two cases illustrate the extent to which cross-border arms trafficking, long blamed for fueling the drug violence in Mexico, is a growing threat to the law enforcement agents charged with halting the flow of guns, drugs and immigrants across the U.S. border.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Dallas released two criminal complaints charging Osorio and his brother, Ranferi Osorio, 27, with possessing firearms with an obliterated serial number. The two men were arrested Monday at their home in Lancaster, Texas, along with their neighbor, Kelvin Leon Morrison, 25, who was charged with knowingly making false statements in acquiring a firearm and dealing in firearms without a license.
According to court affidavits, the three men had delivered 40 firearms with obliterated serial numbers to an ATF informant near the Mexican border in November.