LAS VEGAS (AP) - A wounded FBI agent was legally justified in the fatal shooting of an armed 32-year-old ex-convict during a foot chase and exchange of gunfire in a Las Vegas residential neighborhood more than a year ago, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Thursday.
Wolfson said he determined the unnamed agent, who was shot in the chest and back but was protected by a ballistic vest, and other FBI agents and Las Vegas and Henderson police officers acted lawfully in the Feb. 19, 2013, slaying of Javier Salomon Reyes.
Reyes had been tracked for several days by a multi-jurisdictional fugitive apprehension team seeking his arrest on felony charges including armed robbery, burglary, assault, auto theft and domestic battery strangulation, authorities said.
Wolfson said that when confronted, Reyes ran through backyards and ignored commands to show his hands before firing a stolen .40 caliber handgun several times.
One shot zipped past the agent’s face, one hit the center of his ballistic vest, and one hit the vest in the agent’s back before Reyes climbed on a roof, Wolfson said. The agent took cover behind a block wall and foliage and shot Reyes three times before the suspect collapsed, he said.
Reyes was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
“Fortunately, the special agent was not fatally wounded and no citizens, or other law enforcement agents, were harmed during this incident,” Wolfson said.
The 28-page report withheld the name of the agent and more than 20 other area police and federal agents involved in the case. Wolfson noted that was at the request of the FBI.
A public fact-finding hearing wasn’t conducted in the case because it involved federal agents and not local police officers, Wolfson said.
FBI spokeswoman Bridget Pappas declined Thursday to identify the agent or comment on the shooting - one of two within seven months involving an FBI member of the criminal apprehension team in Las Vegas.
Wolfson in August cleared two FBI agents in the shooting death of a fugitive gunman during an attempt to apprehend him in August 2012 outside a neighborhood casino.
Joshua Oscar Burchell, 35, was mortally wounded as authorities said he ran from a room and pointed a handgun toward officers and passers-by outside Arizona Charlie’s.
Authorities said Burchell had been a suspect in a July 2012 slaying and art theft, and was sought for questioning in a murder case in Mesa, Ariz.
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