Reporter: Craig Smith

 

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - There's a million dollar bounty on four men.  They're wanted for the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

 

Announcing the names of the men charged was the first new information in many months from tight lipped prosecutors and investigators.  Since Terry's death, his case has become tied to the hard-fought battle in Washington over Operation Fast and Furious, a botched program that attempted to trace guns to the drug cartels and catch cartel leaders.  The guns ended up in a long list of crimes, including Terry's murder

 

Brian Terry was in a special Border Patrol unit. One night in December 2010, they found armed men in a wash---five of them.  U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy says when the agents identified themselves, the men pointed their guns at them.

 

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy says,"The agents deployed non-lethal beanbag rounds to subdue to subjects.  The subjects at that point opened fire on the agents."

    

The agents fired back with real bullets. They wounded one man. One bandit's bullet hit Agent 

Terry. While the agents tried to save him, four men ran off.  

     

A grand jury indicted the four men in November but investigators kept the indictment secret 

while they tried to catch the men unaware. Now they're going high profile in the U.S. and 

Mexico with wanted posters and a million dollars in rewards 

      

Investigators say the men got their guns in the U-S.  That's where Terry's death gets tangled 

in the gun tracing operation called Fast and Furious.  Federal agents lost track of thousands 

of guns. Instead of tools to lead investigators to cartel leaders, they became factors in 

crime scenes including Agent Terry's.

      

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy conceded Fast and Furious was part of what she called atmospherics in the Terry murder.

 

KGUN9 reporter Craig Smith asked her: "Please explain what you meant by atmospherics.  We don't really want to speculate on that. Duffy: "by that I meant that in this case, often times Agent Terry's name is brought up in connection with other investigations and simply wanted the family to know that despite any other cases, this case receives our full attention."

 

Investigators will not give details of the gun purchase involved in the Terry case or say 

whether they know which gun killed Agent Terry.  As for why agents used bean bag guns as their first action against the armed men, Richard Barlow the Tucson Sector Chief for Border Patrol would only say Border Patrol Agents are trained to use a variety of options based on the threat they perceive.