URGENT: Deputy shot, critically wounded in drug raid; one suspect dead

SAN BENITO — A drug raid early this morning in La Paloma ended with a Cameron County sheriff's deputy in critical condition from a gunshot wound and the shooting suspect dead.

The sheriff’s deputy is hospitalized at Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen after he was shot once in the mouth by a man that Sheriff Omar Lucio said was acting as a bodyguard for a suspect in a federal drug investigation.

The man believed to be the assailant was shot and killed by officers at the scene.

The wounded deputy, Angel Perez, 28, will not need surgery and is responding to doctors, Lucio said.

Perez was with Drug Enforcement Administration agents and SWAT teams from the sheriff’s department and San Benito police, who were serving federal arrest and search warrants early Friday at a trailer home in the 3400 block of Leal Street in La Paloma, about a mile south of U.S. Highway 281.

Lucio said that the law enforcement agencies went to the trailer park around 6 a.m. to serve the warrants on David Sepulveda, 36. Fifteen members of the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team and 10 San Benito Police SWAT team members were at the scene at the time of the shooting. Lucio said he did not know how many DEA agents were also at the scene.

The alleged shooter emerged from a second trailer home and shot Perez with an AK-47 assault rifle. The shooter was reportedly acting as a bodyguard for Sepulveda, Lucio said.

Perez, who has been on the force for three years and has a child, was airlifted to the hospital in Harlingen, Lucio said.

The shooter was shot at the scene but Lucio said he did not know if the man, who will be identified by fingerprints, died at the scene or en route to the hospital.

The federal warrants were based on a drug investigation conducted by the DEA, a spokesman for that agency in Brownsville said.

However, the spokesman, who declined to give his name, said he could not provide further information on the investigation.

“We had a federal arrest warrant for one individual residing at that residence and that individual is in custody,” the spokesman said. “The individual the sheriff spoke about is still unidentified at this point. Some of the information is still under seal in federal court in Brownsville. I can’t provide details on it if it is still sealed,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman said more information might be available later today.

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