Family Of Slain Border Patrol Agent Seeks To Sue United States

June 21, 2011

Photo courtesy U.S. Border Patrol.
Slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
The family of a Border Patrol agent slain along the Arizona border last year has hired a high profile attorney to investigate whether the United States government can be held responsible for his death.

Brian Terry's family has hired Paul Charlton, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona.

Terry was an elite agent killed in a canyon outside of Nogales, Arizona. Two guns were recovered at the crime scene.

"Clearly the concern is that a weapon, two weapons, were found at the homicide scene where Brian Terry was murdered and that those weapons had been part of Operation Fast and Furious," Charlton said.

The operation is now a scandal at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. The agency is accused of allowing the guns to be smuggled into Mexico in order to build larger criminal cases. The chairman of the congressional committee holding the hearing has called on the acting director of ATF to resign.