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DALLAS (AP) — A Florida couple is seeking more than $1 million in damages from a group of hunting guides following a shooting at a remote Texas border camp that initially was blamed on immigrants crossing the border from Mexico.
Edwin and Carol Roberts, of Pensacola, Florida, filed the lawsuit Monday against several parties, including a New Mexico guiding company and two of its guides.
The lawsuit stems from a January 2017 incident in which deputies found Edwin Roberts and a guide, Walker Daugherty, with gunshot wounds.
According to the lawsuit, the couple was sleeping in a motor home while Daugherty and the second guide were staying nearby in a small cabin. The couple awoke to someone trying to enter the locked motor home and Edwin Roberts shouted several warnings before firing a shot toward the door. He then started driving the vehicle toward the cabin for protection but was shot twice, the lawsuit says.
An investigation by the Presidio County sheriff's office determined that Daugherty had shot Roberts and that the other guide shot Daugherty. It's not clear why either guide fired their weapons.
Roberts and Daugherty were treated for their wounds. But the couple's attorney, Kevin Glasheen, says Edwin Roberts continues to suffer physical pain and impairment.
Glasheen said it remains unclear who attempted to enter the motor home, but that he thinks it may have been one of the guides trying to pull off a prank.
"Whatever it was, it was a mind-boggling level of stupidity taking place," he said.
Sheriff's investigators were told that a band of immigrants passing through the area had attacked the group, but they say officers searched the perimeter of the ranch where the hunters were staying and didn't find signs of people approaching the camp that night or any evidence of "cross-border violence."
Daugherty and the other guide, Michael Bryant, each face charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and engaging in deadly conduct by discharging firearms in the direction of others, according to the Presidio County district attorney's office. They are due in court later this month.
A message left at a phone listing for the two men in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, was not returned Wednesday. A message left with an attorney for the guiding company named in the lawsuit, Big Rim Outfitters, also was not returned.
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