Reporting from Houston—
A bullet fired during a shootout between police and suspects in northern Mexico this week crossed the border into downtown El Paso and wounded a middle-aged woman walking with a child, raising concerns about spillover violence.Maria Romero, 48, was pushing a stroller down a sidewalk at about 11 a.m. Tuesday when she was struck in her right calf by a .223-caliber bullet likely fired from more than half a mile away, El Paso police Det. Mike Baranyay told The Times.
At the same time, El Paso officials received calls on the city's 911 line reporting the sound of gunshots near Cesar Chavez Border Highway, which runs along the Rio Grande, Baranyay said.
Romero was treated at University Medical Center of El Paso and released; the child was not hurt in the shooting, Baranyay said. It was not clear whether the two were related, he said.
During an evening news conference at El Paso City Hall on Tuesday, Police Chief Greg Allen said the bullet was believed to be a stray round from a shooting between carjackers and police in the Mexican border city of Juarez. Up to 50 shots were fired during the shooting, officials said.
The bullet that hit the woman is of the same caliber used by Juarez police assault rifles, not the firearms seized from the suspects they were pursuing, officials told the El Paso Times, which posted a Google map of the shooting.
"We have taken the round into evidence, and it will be submitted to DPS [the Texas Department of Public Safety] for testing," Allen said. "We have to find the gun it was shot from, and the likelihood of that is slim and none, pretty much."
El Paso residents are no strangers to stray bullets from across the border.
Some buildings in historic downtown El Paso still bear 100 year-old scars from stray bullets fired in Juarez during the Mexican Revolution.
Border violence has escalated in Juarez during the last four years -- fueled by battles between drug trafficking cartels -- and rounds fired in Mexico have hit buildings in El Paso at least three times. The buildings known to be hit were a local high school, City Hall and a University of Texas at El Paso building.
But Tuesday's shooting was the first in recent memory in which an El Paso resident was hit by the cross-border gunfire.
El Paso County Sheriff's Cmdr. Gomecindo Lopez described the shooting as "highly disturbing" but said local, state and federal law enforcement will work together to secure the area.
"The city of El Paso remains a safe place to live even though we do have, from time to time, these types of incidents," Lopez said.
Some local officials said they fear that the shooting will harm the image of El Paso, which has been ranked the safest city of its size in the U.S. for the last two years.
"This is just another difficulty for the city of El Paso and the border region when we are trying to highlight the fact that the border violence is on the decline," said Mayor John Cook, who leads the U.S.-Mexico Border Mayors Assn.
"When we have something like this, it is always going to attract national media attention to try to say how dangerous it is to live in border cities, but I can tell you that border cities remain very safe places," Cook said.
Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott has complained about spillover violence from Mexico, and in November sent a request to President Obama to bolster security along the U.S.-Mexican border.
In the letter, Abbott, a Republican, cited an incident last year in which highway workers repairing a south Texas road close to a drug-smuggling area "were fired upon from the southern side of the border."
But Cook, a Democrat, said stationing troops along the border will not necessarily protect residents from stray bullets.
"There is no way you can prevent an incident like this from happening because of the geography of the two cities," Cook said. "If there is a gun battle that happens in El Paso, there is the possibility for bullets to stray into Mexico and vice versa."
ALSO:
Texas officials remove 11 children from home of sex offender
Five dead in murder-suicide at Korean spa in suburban Atlanta
Girl Scouts promote homosexuality and abortion, lawmaker says
