By BOB SABLATURA, Houston Chronicle, November 04, 1998
One of the officers nobilled in the death of Pedro Oregon Navarro fired his semiautomatic pistol at the 22-year-old man until the magazine was empty, then reloaded and continued firing.
In all, Officer David R. Barrera fired 24 of the 33 shots discharged in Oregon's southwest Houston apartment July 12, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Assistant District Attorney Ed Porter confirmed that Barrera fired most of the shots. While the medical examiner's office could not determine the exact caliber of the bullets that made the 12 wounds in Oregon's body, Porter said, three of the four bullets recovered from the body were fired from Barrera's weapon.
Porter, who was present on the scene a few hours after the shooting -- and reconstructed it during a walk-through with the officers involved -- suggested that the bullets that struck Oregon may have been some of the last shots that the officers fired.
"I strongly suspect that was the case," Porter said.
Richard Mithoff, an attorney representing Oregon's family, said it is "incomprehensible" that one of the officers paused to reload his weapon.
"They had no grounds to be in the apartment, and no grounds to open fire," Mithoff said. "And if this is true, there certainly was no grounds to reload and execute this guy lying on the ground."
Aaron Ruby, a member of the Justice for Pedro Oregon Coalition, said Barrera's actions could only be termed "homicidal and premeditated," and probably explain the numerous bullet holes in Oregon's back.
"If that fact was known to the grand jury, it makes their actions all the more outrageous," Ruby said. "I believe the people of Houston will be stunned when they learn of this."
Harris County District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr. said state law allows police officers to use deadly force if they believe it necessary for self-defense and can continue shooting "so long as they reasonably perceive" the threat continues.
"An analogy I use is that if it is OK to kill a guy dead, it is OK to kill him dead, dead, dead," Holmes said.
Holmes said it is also not uncommon for a police officer involved in a shooting to have no idea how many shots he fired.