Federal prosecutors have filed felony assault charges against a woman who was shot Saturday by U.S. Border Patrol on the Southwest Side, in what led to a heated confrontation between federal agents and around 100 protesters.
A Department of Homeland Security statement says the woman rammed her vehicle into the vehicle of federal agents, then took “defensive fire” from the agents. The woman was treated at a hospital and was discharged into the custody of the FBI, the statement says.
The charges filed Sunday morning accuse Marimar Martinez, 30, and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, of driving vehicles in a civilian “convoy” that was following federal agents driving as part of a security detail for a Customs and Border Protection operation.
According to the eight-page criminal complaint, the civilian vehicle “drove aggressively and erratically towards” the federal agents’ vehicles, disobeyed stop signs, red lights and drove “the wrong way down one-way streets in order to pursue the CBP Vehicles.”
When the agents’ vehicle got to around 39th Street and Kedzie Avenue, civilian vehicles boxed them in, and Martinez drove her vehicle up along the driver’s side of one of the agent’s vehicles, according to the charges. That’s when Martinez’s vehicle sideswiped the federal vehicle, and Ruiz’s vehicle struck the rear-right end of the federal vehicle, the charges state.
Agents then got out of the vehicle, as Martinez then drove toward one of those agents, according to the charges. The agent then fired “approximately five shots from his service weapon at the driver of the Martinez vehicle,” the charges state. Martinez continued driving north on Kedzie, the charges state.
After the shooting, Ruiz backed up his car and drove to a gas station, where authorities arrested him, according to the charges. Paramedics found Martinez at a repair shop near 35th Street and California Avenue, about a mile northwest of from where the shooting happened, and she was treated at a hospital for “gunshot wounds,” the charges state.
The charges say the pair “forcibly assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered with an officer of the United States.” The charges do not mention anything about Martinez being found with a gun, which a separate DHS statement says.
Relatives of Martinez told the Sun-Times on Sunday that she is OK and in federal custody, but deferred further comment to their lawyers, who couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, the White House confirmed Saturday it “authorized” the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois over opposition from Gov. JB Pritzker.
Asked Sunday on CNN about the shooting, Pritzker said little was known about how it happened.
“What happens in these sorts of incidents is, typically, ICE puts out a press release before anybody else can speak with the press, and then it gets reported on social media and elsewhere,” Pritkzer said. He pointed to the fatal ICE shooting of a man last month in Franklin Park.
“At first, they said that the officer had been threatened with his life. The reality of it and the truth of it has now come out, and that wasn’t the case. They killed somebody. So, here, it’s really hard to know exactly what the facts are. And they won’t let us access the facts. They are just putting out their propaganda, and then we have got to later determine what actually happened.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office has not commented on Saturday’s shooting. Johnson spoke Sunday morning at an event honoring Bishop Larry D. Trotter but didn’t address the shooting and left without speaking to reporters.
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