It’s been two weeks since Valeria Munique Tachiquin Alvarado was fatally shot by an undercover U.S. Border Patrol agent in Chula Vista.
While the Chula Vista Police Department continues its investigation of the incident, the family has retained an attorney.
Eugene Iredale was retained Sept. 30 and plans to file a claim immediately, trailing a wrongful death lawsuit by six months.
“An agent who should never have been hired killed a woman who never should have been killed,” Iredale said Monday.
The 32-year-old mother of five was visiting a friend that day according to family members.
Plain-clothes U.S. Border Patrol agents were conducting an enforcement operation at an apartment complex in the 600 block of Moss Street for a prior deported felon whom U.S. Border Patrol agents were attempting to arrest.
Chula Vista Police Capt. Gary Wedge said that agents knocked on the door, identified themselves, made contact with an occupant, of which there were several, and asked if a male individual was present.
Tachiquin-Alvarado was inside the apartment and answered the agent, saying yes he was in the shower, and then made her way past the agents, according to police.
Wedge said as Tachiquin-Alvarado was leaving the unit, agents tried to delay her for questioning.
“They wanted to detain her to talk to her to identify her,” Wedge said.
Wedge said she ignored them and walked to her vehicle, which she started and used as a deadly weapon against an officer, ultimately carrying him more than 200 yards on her hood.
The agent drew his service weapon and fired through the windshield approximately nine times, killing Tachiquin-Alvarado, according to Wedge.
Iredale said so far there are five witnesses who’ve come forward and given a different account of what happened.
Iredale said the family would sue for damages, including the loss of the companionship, love and services of a wife and a mother.
Both agencies have declined to release the agent’s name and asked the media in a statement last week not to publish the name, citing a concern for the safety of the agent.
Iredale said the request is unjust.
“They had no hesitation in releasing the name of the decedent, but they’re going out of their way to publish her record of conviction for misdemeanors, including those more than a decade old,” he said.
“It appears that their concern for privacy and for prevention of negative information extends not to the victim but only to the killer.”
The family held a funeral for Tachiquin-Alvarado at Humphrey’s Mortuary on Broadway Sunday.
