Associated Press
YUMA - Apparent drug smugglers fired shots at two U.S. Border Patrol agents about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday east of Yuma, a few miles north of Mexico, a spokesman said.
Michael McGlasson, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector, said agents on patrol from the Wellton station spotted a vehicle traveling south and tried to intercept it.
The agents, in separate vehicles, were trying to lay spike strips across a dirt road when passengers fired an undetermined number of shots out the windows of the vehicle - a large, four-wheel drive sport utility vehicle.
The agents took cover behind their vehicles and returned fire, and then they gave chase as the vehicle headed south a few miles before the gunmen abandoned it near the border and ran into Mexico.
Agents, aided by other Border Patrol agents from the Tucson sector, found marijuana residue in the SUV and determined that its occupants apparently had driven to a load at a delivery point further north, then had headed back toward Mexico.
McGlasson said the agents could not understand why the gunmen had abandoned the still-functioning vehicle. “That’s what’s puzzling,” he said. “There must have been some reason.”