From KTEP:
Two years after a deadly shooting at a watering hole near this small West Texas town, the case remains stalled, and the sheriff is now among those calling for justice.
“In my opinion they should have been indicted. We should be looking forward to going to trial. If the district judges don’t dismiss it,” said Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, in his first interview since the incident that killed a migrant man and critically injured a woman.
West described himself as a friend of alleged suspects twins Mark and Mike Sheppard. Mark Sheppard worked for the Sheriff’s office at the time of the shooting. His brother Mike Sheppard was the warden at the nearby West Texas Detention Center.
The twins told investigators they were hunting wild animals late afternoon on September 27, 2022. Mike Sheppard fired the shots that hit a man in the head and struck a woman in the abdomen.
Mark Sheppard told the investigating Texas Ranger he and his brother were hunting ducks, birds and javelinas – a type of wild pig.
“There’s no way it was a javelina” said West. “There’s no way you could think it was a javelina. Not from the evidence I’ve seen, no.”
Mike Sheppard’s attorney Brent Mayr said “this was a tragic accident nothing more.” He said Sheppard did not know he was firing on a group of migrants who had stopped for a drink of water at the reservoir known as Fivemile Tank.
“They never had any idea that there were people out there in the desert. That these, that migrants, were out there,” Mayr said.
The twins have since left Sierra Blanca and are back in their home state Florida.
But residents are still coping with the aftermath. The shooting raised old fears in the town of some 3,000 people off Interstate 10.
“A lot of people feel the same sadness we feel,” said Delfina Lozoya. “But the majority are afraid to talk.”
Her restaurant Delfina’s is popular with local residents and the Sheppard brothers were regulars. Many people in the town knew the twins. Lozoya questions why nothing has happened two years after the shooting. “They need to follow up with the case so they can pay for what they did,” she said.
Sierra Blanca native Bill Addington said history has shown justice is swift for some victims in this region.
“If a Mexican, someone of Mexican origin, had killed an Anglo you know they’d be in prison – or worse,” Addington said.
Addington said he asked El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, who handles cases in Hudspeth County, about why the case is languishing.
“‘Why aren’t you doing anything about the prosecution of the murder that killed an innocent immigrant getting water and wounded his friend who’s still suffering. Why haven’t you done anything?’ He didn’t answer.”
Sierra Blanca resident Bill Addington stands near the watering hole that was the scene of a shooting in which a young man was killed and a woman was seriously wounded. Both were migrants in a group traveling through the area. Addington and other residents question why the men involved in the shooting have not been indicted.
Angela Kocherga / KTEP News
Both the federal and state investigations remain open. Neither the Texas Rangers nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas would provide any details.
Mayr, Mike Sheppard’s attorney, said he has no information about whether or how the case might proceed.
“It’s not uncommon for certain investigations to take about a year but the fact that we’re coming up on the two-year mark, it’s like alright what is there that needs to be discovered more than a year after the alleged incident. I don’t know,” he said.
In Durango, Mexico in the hometown of the man who died in the shooting, family members gather for a Catholic mass on the date of his death to remember Jesus Sepulveda.
The 22-year-old left home and crossed the border into Texas in late September 2022 for a construction job in Austin to support his daughters, now three and five years old, his father Napoleon Sepulveda said.
He said the month of September is especially hard for the family “because that’s when they took his life.”
The loss is difficult to bear and the family is losing hope the men who are responsible for his death will be held accountable Sepulveda said.
“It makes it even harder seeing there is no justice for our boy.”
