Attorney: Autopsy report suggests police shot man in the back

HARLINGEN — A Mexican national shot by police under an Expressway 77 overpass Jan. 5 was killed by two shotgun blasts to the back, an attorney representing his family claims.

A medical examiner says Diego Rivas-Soto was shot in the side of the back but that he was shot only once.

However, Juan Angel Guerra, a former Willacy County district attorney now in private practice, says it appears Rivas-Soto was shot twice in the back.

The autopsy report contains conflicting and confusing language, but most parts show that buckshot from two shotgun shells entered Rivas-Soto's lower left side and exited his right front chest, Guerra said Thursday.

The report itself concludes that Rivas-Soto died from a shotgun wound "of (the) chest into (the) abdomen." The entrance wound is described as the "posterolateral back," meaning the side of the back.

The pellets followed a track from Rivas-Soto's "left to right, back to front, and slightly upward," the report states.

A diagram signed by the medical examiner and part of the autopsy report - not previously provided to the Valley Morning Star -shows an entrance wound to the side of the back.

"That's conflicting," Guerra said of the report. "Because it states the cause of death was a shotgun wound of the chest into the abdomen, but states elsewhere that there is a shotgun wound on the lower left back and two exit wounds on the upper right chest area.

"It's real confusing. It says two (shotgun wounds) and then it says one."

Dr. Norma Jean Farley, whose forensics lab conducted the autopsy, said one gunshot wound entered "the side of the left back."

But she said Rivas-Soto was shot only once. "We only have one entrance wound. There is not a second shot," she said.

She said eight shotgun pellets from one shell entered Rivas-Soto's body and two of those exited the right side of the body.

A second mark on the back of the body is not an entrance wound, but one pellet that did not leave the body, Farley said.

Harlingen Police Chief Daniel Castillo said Thursday he could not comment on the autopsy report and would not respond to Guerra's comments.

"What I can say is a Texas Ranger responded to the (shooting) scene at our request and we trust in his findings," he said. "I'm not going to comment on Mr. Guerra's statements."

The case is now at the district attorney's office.

Rivas-Soto, 41, was the father of five children from a tiny village outside of San Juan del Rio in Durango, Mexico, and had come to Harlingen looking for work, Guerra has said.

Police said that on the night of Jan. 5, the man pulled a knife after officers confronted him about lighting a fire under an overpass at the interchange of Expressway 83 and Expressway 77.

According to police statements, he was asked in English and Spanish to take his hands out of his pockets. He then reportedly took out the knife and charged at Officer Jose Luis Palafox Jr. A fellow officer - who has never been publicly identified - had no choice but to shoot to protect Palafox, officials have said.

Officials have refused to describe the knife.

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Allen Essex is a reporter for the Valley Morning Star.