A Month Later, Questions About Deadly Border Incident
BERMAN: A little over month ago a border patrol agent died and another was injured in a mysterious incident in West Texas. The next day President Trump tweeted, "Border patrol officer killed at southern border, another badly hurt. We will seek out bring to justice those responsible. We will and must build the wall." So while the president tried to use the incident as a way to justify his border wall, at that time, he had no idea what happened, no one did. And now more than a month later there are still a lot of questions about what happened. CNN' Scott McClain investigates.</s>ANGIE OCHOA, FIANCEE OF ROGELIO MARTINEZ: We talked about our future, what he planned. What we wanted to do. He always spoke about getting old together.</s>SCOTT MCCLAIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's been a month since Angie Ochoa's Fiancee Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Martinez was killed on duty. A month wondering what happened.</s>OCHOA: The whole thing is very confusing, you know, and just the fact that nobody is getting any answers just makes it even worse.</s>MCCLAIN: On the night of November 18th, Martinez was working alone, checking culverts along the interstate near Van Horn, Texas about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Whatever happened next left Martinez badly injured and unconscious. He never regained consciousness and later died in the hospital from head injuries.</s>OCHOA: I still have the last I love you note he left that night he left to work. He said I love you, and I found it the following morning when I was going through my makeup.</s>MCCLAIN (on camera): How did that make you feel?</s>OCHOA: Tore me apart just to know that someone loved me that much. And now he's gone with no answers.</s>MCCLAIN (voice-over): A second agent, Steven Michael Garland was also found injured in the same area, but survived. The border patrol union was quick to label it an attack. Texas Governor Greg Abbott called it murder, and on Twitter the president used the incident to promote the southern border wall while he's promised to build. But a local sheriff, Oscar Coreo (ph), who responded to the scene that night says it did not look like an attack to him. He suggested the agents might have fallen 8 to 10 feet to the bottom of the culvert and told the Dallas Morning News it's even possible they were clipped by a passing tractor-trailer. The union disagrees.</s>CHRIS CABRERA, NATIONAL BORDER PATROL SPOKESMAN: These agents didn't get clipped by a truck. They didn't get clipped by a car. They were attacked. It's just plain to see that they were attacked.</s>MCCLAIN: According to a Department of Justice official with knowledge of the investigation, the FBI was investigating several possibilities, including an accident, an attack, or a dispute between the two agents. In the weeks after the incident, the FBI set its sights on two brothers who had crossed the border illegal according to a search warrant mistakenly filed in open court. Investigators searched the vehicle they were in for evidence that might tie them to the scene. The FBI has since indicated it's no longer looking in that direction.</s>MCCLAIN (on camera): You had the opportunity to actually go out to that scene. What did that tell you?</s>OCHOA: I find it very hard that a fall could have caused all the damage that he had. And as far as him being, you know, side swiped, it couldn't have happened either because he was not off the freeway. He was actually on the side road. From the damages to his face, I mean there's no way. There's no way.</s>MCCLAIN (voice-over): The one person who might have answers, Agent Garland, says he doesn't remember anything after arriving at work that day. Garland has so far not responded to interview requests and Ochoa says he's also not reached out to her family to offer condolences.</s>OCHOA: And I just figure eventually, you know, he'll start remembering things and they'll catch the ones that did it. But now it's just -- it's become so hard to believe that he can't remember anything.</s>MCCLAIN: For its part, the Border Patrol Union says that Garland suffered severe head trauma. That he wants to remember what happened. He wants to get it out in the open and ultimately he wants justice to be done, John.</s>BERMAN: Scott, these two agents, what do we know about their relationship?</s>MCCLAIN: Well, the Border Patrol Unions insists that Garland and Martinez were actually friends. But Angie Ochoa said that her fiancee had no friends at work. Before he worked at Van Horn station he was stationed at a different border patrol post in South Texas. He had plenty of friends from work there. In fact, many of them trekked across the state to attend his funeral. But Ochoa told us that Martinez' experience in Van Horn was different. He wasn't close with his colleagues. He didn't feel like he was being treated fairly by his supervisors and ultimately he wanted to transfer to a station closer to El Paso. And one other important thing to point out, John, and that's that Angie Ochoa tells us that she asked the FBI whether it's possible that Martinez was killed with rocks. The FBI told her that there simply is no evidence to support that.</s>BERMAN: All right, Scott McClain, thank you very much. Coming up, we know when Senator Al Franken will officially resign or at least when he says he will. He's one of several lawmakers who will either resigning or not seeking re-election because of sexual harassment allegations after Representative Jackie Speier said last month that there are two sitting members of Congress who have engaged in sexual harassment. We called their offices, 537 of them. What we found out next.