A teenager trying to smuggle liquid methamphetamine into the United States was stopped by suspicious border agents who were caught on video encouraging him to drink it in order to prove it wasn’t contraband.
You can probably imagine what happened after he drank liquid meth.
Watch below:
He took for drinks, and later tests showed the meth was 100 times stronger than a normal shot of it.
On @ABC2020: Shocking video shows how an encounter between U.S. border patrol agents and Mexican teen led to tragedy https://t.co/Yk1cGnr2sg pic.twitter.com/dGtoW272AL
— ABC News (@ABC) July 28, 2017
More from ABC News:
A government surveillance video obtained by ABC News has shed new light on a tragic incident at the U.S.-Mexico border, sparking outrage from members of Congress who help oversee U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The video shows that in 2013 two U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers appeared to encourage, or at least permit, a 16-year-old Mexican high school student to drink from a bottle that tests would later reveal contained concentrated liquid methamphetamine.
The young man, Cruz Velazquez, died within two hours of drinking the substance, but the two officers involved, Valerie Baird and Adrian Perallon, remain on the job today, with no disciplinary action taken against them.
A former head of internal affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, James Tomsheck, told ABC News the two officers violated agency protocols by allowing the young man to drink from the bottle, and that he was told at the time they would be punished.
“If they truly suspected there was a controlled substance in the bottle,” Tomsheck said, “they should’ve conducted a field test.”
Apparently the U.S. government settled with the family of the dead teen smuggler for $1 million. But they want an apology and for the agents to be reprimanded:
There was no apology or admission of wrongdoing, and both officers testified that they never received a reprimand for their conduct, a fact that still angers members of Velazquez’s family.
“How can the government allow that? It’s like, OK you can kill someone,” Reyna Velazquez, Cruz’s sister, told ABC News. “They took him as a fool, as who cares. Well, that fool, he was the greatest person I ever knew.”
Uhm… yeah. Well he was also a drug smuggler. I don’t think these agents should be reprimanded at all. The kid clearly knew what he was doing, and he was basically committing suicide. It’s sad for the family, but the agents did nothing wrong. The kid did.