Federal prosecutors finished presenting their case before jurors in the murder trial of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry and after a day of rest defense attorneys are expected to present their evidence.
The trial has been an emotional rollercoaster for members of the Terry family who have had to relive the loss of their loved one time and time again as the case moves forward.
Terry was part of an elite Border Patrol unit called BORTAC that had been patrolling an area known as Mesquite Seep on December 2010 when they encountered a team of gunmen who were hunting for drug cartels smugglers in an effort to steal their drugs.
The agents moved to arrest the heavily armed members of the “rip-crew” which set off a fierce firefight where Terry died.
Two of the weapons used by the rip-crew ended up being traced back to a failed and controversial operation by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives called Fast and Furious. As part of that operation, ATF agents allowed known cartel associates to illegally purchase firearms so that they could trace them to the various cartel bosses. The operation turned into a disaster since the agents lost track of close to 1,400 weapons many of which ended up in Mexico in the hands of cartel members.
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, the U.S. Department of Justice moved to have any mention of Fast and Furious be removed from the trial calling the operation “irrelevant”, the move was granted by the U.S. District Judge David Burry who is the sitting judge in the trial.
“Today the prosecution rests,” Michelle Terry-Balogh said to Breitbart Texas’s Bob Price Monday at the conclusion of hearings for that day. “We have the day off tomorrow. The defense witness could not be transported from New York until tomorrow so he will testify on Wednesday.”
During the testimony on Monday witnesses did discuss that the guns were in the desert and that is where the suspected gunmen got the weapons, food and other supplies.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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