US marshals shoot unarmed man in Albuquerque, seize cell phone cameras from witnesses
April 2, 2014
As Albuquerque residents take to the streets to protest against the ongoing slayings of citizens by their local police department, federal agents got into the act by opening fire on an unarmed man Tuesday morning, then seizing cameras from witnesses.
But more citizens with cameras arrived on the scene as a group of U.S. Marshals stood around the victim, Gilberto Angelo Serrano, proving unafraid to voice their displeasure at the trigger-happy culture that apparently has seeped into all levels of law enforcement in Albuquerque.
Realizing they were outnumbered by cameras, the U.S. Marshals could only ask people to stand back, not bothering to try and stop them from recording as they tried to wrap a bandage around the head of the man they had just shot, who was laying on the sidewalk bleeding.
But a witness named Gabriel Valdez said the Marshals confiscated his cell phone camera as well as his mother’s camera as “evidence,” when he did not even start recording until after the shooting.
The incident took place around 10 a.m. when a group of Marshals were trying to apprehend a fugitive who was driving his truck.
“Get out of the car! Get out of the vehicle! And then boom! She shot like right away. She just shot right away,” Gabriel Valdez said.
That’s how one witness describes the gunfire that rang out in the South Valley Tuesday morning.
“He never pulled out a gun, nothing,” one witness told KRQE News 13. “His hands were on the steering wheel.”
“This is enough! This is ridiculous!” another witness said.
KRQE News 13 talked to one witness who says he had his cell phone taken away from him.
“I have evidence on there they said because I have video on there, not video of the actual shooting, but of everything else,” Valdez said.
In an interview with a New Mexico live streamer, Valdez said that the Marshals first asked to see what he had recorded, so he handed them the phone.
Then once they had the phone in their hands, they refused to return it to him, not even to allow him to write down telephone numbers he had on the phone. That segment of the interview begins at 5:16 in this video.
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