Someone from SSPD just sent me an email with this article in it.
Girl shot at DEA stakeout is dead
By Maro Robbins
San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 02/12/2003 12:00 AM
As Ashley Villarreal lay in the hospital and drew her last breaths Tuesday, a friend challenged the official version of how federal agents days earlier shot the 14-year-old daughter of a drug trafficking suspect.
The eyewitness account came as Ashley's family requested that she be taken off life support. She died at 6:14 p.m., a hospital spokesman said.
Daniel Robles, a family friend and housemate who was with the teenager during Sunday's stakeout by agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration, offered the conflicting narrative.
The agents were there to get the girl's father, Joey Angel Villarreal, a three-time convicted drug offender who turned himself in and was charged with cocaine trafficking a day after the shooting.
Federal authorities have said an agent opened fire when a darkened car accelerated toward him.
But Robles said that, to him, in the passenger seat, and to the girl behind the wheel, it looked like a darkened car was accelerating toward them.
The unmarked vehicles that emerged moments after Ashley steered the Mitsubishi Eclipse out of the driveway and onto a darkened South San Joaquin Street appeared to be pursuing them, he said.
"It makes me really angry," Robles fumed. "This girl's dying and there are these reports that she threatened them."
Robles' story reflected one side of the polarized narratives and charged emotions that will be sifted by investigators with two law-enforcement agencies examining the shooting incident.
DEA investigators fresh from Washington visited the scene Tuesday afternoon while San Antonio police officers continued their own inquiry by questioning Ashley Villarreal's grandmother.
Throughout the day, family members lingered at Wilford Hall Medical Center, keeping a vigil over the girl who once dreamed about being a model or singer.
Ashley's older sister, Adrianna, said doctors told the family that the gunshot to the head left Ashley's brain like "scrambled eggs." If she still twitched slightly in her sleep, the movement was due to medication.
Waves of family members came to say farewell before the family told doctors to shut off Ashley's life-support equipment.
"Her head is swollen. It just doesn't look like her anymore," Adrianna said. "They've taken an angel away from us."
Earlier that afternoon, the only visible reminders of the shooting were the glass shards of a windshield gleaming in the street and, nearby, a pair of DEA agents sketching a diagram of the incident.
DEA officials said they could not predict how long their investigation would take.
The agency's examination of an October shooting that occurred in a North Side parking lot where a drug trafficking suspect allegedly tried to run down an agent is ongoing.
According to officials, Sunday's incident began when agents watched two figures driving without headlights from the house in a hurry after 11 p.m. As agents tried to block the car's path, the driver accelerated.
Believing the car was going to ram him, an agent on foot opened fire twice. The agent was "clipped" but not hurt by the vehicle. The car went into reverse and an agent standing behind it discharged two additional shots. Ashley was the only one wounded.
"Everybody is touched by what happened," said Javier Peņa, special agent in charge of the local DEA office. "Our prayers go out to this young girl."
Robles, 44, described himself as the household handyman who lives with the teenagers Ashley and Adrianna and their grandmother on South San Joaquin Street.
Robles said that he had waxed the Eclipse earlier in the day and that at the end of the night, Ashley told him she wanted to move it to the back where it could be covered and protected from dew.
They had to drive around the block to reach the rear entrance. And, like a lot of youths too young to have a license to drive, Ashley wanted to move it herself, Robles said.
Once they backed out of the driveway, a car tailed closely behind. Ashley said she thought they were being followed and sped up.
Another vehicle, a pickup, came at them from the front, Robles said. When Ashley veered right onto Motes Street, they collided.
Robles said the agents opened fire immediately after the crash and didn't identify themselves until afterward.
"The first shot was fired and Ashley didn't say a word," he said. "She didn't scream or anything and I knew she was hit with the first shot."
Robles contended Ashley never tried to back up unless, somehow in the collision, the automatic transmission was knocked into reverse. And he insisted that there was no way for the car to endanger the agents.
"How could they feel threatened when we were jammed in between (their vehicles) like a sandwich?" he said.
Officials declined to respond to Robles' version or to discuss details of the case Tuesday, citing the pending investigation.
After the gunfire, Robles said, the agents pulled him out through the passenger side and handcuffed him. Then they reached in and lay Ashley on the grassy curb.
"They knew. I could see it. They had made a big mistake," Robles said.
mrobbins@express-news.net
Staff Writer Jesse Bogan contributed to this report.