Biddeford witness saw gunshot victim bleeding from head

www.pressherald.com
A white Kia sedan with bullet holes through the windshield at the intersection of Hill and Pool streets in Biddeford after a reported shooting involving immigration agents. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

Daniel Boucher was getting ready for work Monday morning when he heard what sounded like fireworks going off outside of his home near downtown Biddeford.

He rushed to the window, where he said he saw an SUV trying to ram a small white car in the intersection. Moments later, agents in vests stopped the car and pulled the driver out.

“He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher said later Monday morning. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.'”

Boucher watched in disbelief as the man’s legs stopped moving as he lay on the ground. He believes he watched him die.

The man, who has not been identified by authorities, was apparently shot by immigration agents, according to House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, who represents Biddeford. Spokespeople for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigrants and Customs Enforcement have not commented on the incident.

The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine say the man was a 26-year-old immigrant from Colombia who was authorized to work in the U.S.

Advertisement

Sen. Angus King said Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told him that the man had orders to leave the country and that there was a warrant out for his arrest.

Lucas Scott, 18 of Wells, said in an interview that he was driving through the intersection of Hill and Pool streets on his way to work when he heard a commotion and saw an agent with their weapon drawn yelling at a driver who appeared to move their vehicle toward the officer.

“He fired, I would say, probably four shots at him,” Scott said. “I just hear the popping, but I did see him draw his gun.”

After the shots, Scott said he could see the car rolling down the street.

Across the intersection, resident Em Akerley was in her second floor apartment when she heard a gunshot around 7:15 a.m., followed by about seven more pops. Her first thought was that it was a drive-by shooting. She hadn’t heard any yelling before the shots rang out.

Akerley watched from her window as the small white car circled in the intersection as if the driver had no control. She said two federal agents with vests on pressed up against the driver’s side door trying to guide it to not hit anything.”

Advertisement

“All of a sudden it seemed like six people with vests on were running down the street,” she said. “I didn’t know where they were coming from.”

Akerley said agents appeared to crash a vehicle into the smaller car to get it to stop, then the driver was pulled out.

“No one went to him and no one did anything,” she said, her voice choking with tears.

Daniel Boucher lives in Biddeford in an apartment at the intersection of Pool and Hill streets, where a shooting happened on Monday. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

After Biddeford police and an ambulance arrived, Boucher said he saw someone appear to start CPR on the driver. Boucher went out to his front door, where the federal agent he believed fired the shots walked past him.

“I said ‘This was awful’ and he said, ‘He was trying to ram me,'” Boucher said.

Boucher said the man’s body lay uncovered in the street, “an awful thing to see.”

Advertisement

“I wouldn’t want anyone to see what I witnessed,” he said. “I wish they had covered the body.”

Boucher said he called Biddeford police after the shooting, but doesn’t plan to talk to federal agents because “they’ll sweep this under the rug like they have so many times before.”

Hours after the shooting, both Boucher and Akerley said they keep thinking about the man who died. Boucher, who stopped several times while describing the scene to compose himself, kept coming back to the words he heard the man say.

“He was saying he was trying to stop and then he died. Why? Because he was driving a car?” he said.

“I don’t know who this man was, but he didn’t deserve to be executed in the street,” Akerley said. “I’m pretty (expletive) tired of people dying in the streets.”