Border Patrol agent killed in Campo-area solo crash
East County CA May 14, 2022 A U.S. Border Patrol agent died Friday morning in a solo rollover crash in rural East County, near the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities said.
The agent died at the scene of the Border Patrol vehicle crash, San Diego Sector Border Patrol officials said.
The California Highway Patrol said the agent was the only person in the vehicle. The crash site was well down a dirt road off Bell Valley Truck Trail.
The incident was reported to Cal Fire about 5:40 a.m., Cal Fire Capt. Neil Czapinski said.
He said Border Patrol agents led paramedics to the crash site, where they found an overturned Border Patrol vehicle that had sustained heavy damage. Czapinski said one person died at the scene.
No other information was immediately available.
Friday’s crash marked the first on-duty death this year among Border Patrol agents nationwide. A Sacramento-based Customs and Border Protection officer died in January due to COVID-19 complications.
According to records compiled by Customs and Border Protection, on-duty deaths among CBP officers and Border Patrol agents were rare —typically a handful per year, with none in 2005 or 2015 — until the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.
Between late 2003 and the end of 2019, 45 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents died in the line of duty. There were 21 on-duty deaths in 2020 and 35 on-duty deaths in 2021, the large majority of them attributed to COVID-19.
Among those who died from COVID-19 were four working in San Diego County. David Ramirez, a Border Patrol intelligence agent assigned to the San Diego sector, died in September 2021. CBP Officer Crispin San Jose, who was assigned to Cross Border Xpress in San Ysidro, died in March 2021. CBP Officer Genaro Guerrero, who worked at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, died in February 2021. CBP Officer Carlo Cayabyab, who worked at the Tecate Port of Entry, died in September 2020.
Two Border Patrol agents were killed in crashes last year, including one in March in Imperial County. Authorities said Agent Alejandro Flores-Bañuelos, 35, stopped to help a motorist involved in a crash in Salton City during a dust storm that produced low visibility. While helping the occupants of a car that was disabled in the roadway, another driver struck the disabled car and the agent, fatally injuring him.
A head-on crash last July in Arizona killed Agent Daniel Cox and the driver of the other vehicle. Cox was assigned to the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector.
Friday’s fatal crash comes less than a year after two San Diego police officers died in a head-on collision in San Ysidro.
On June 4, married couple police Detective Jamie Huntley-Park and Detective Ryan Park were killed when a wrong-way driver slammed into their vehicle on Interstate 5 in San Ysidro. The detectives were not scheduled to work that day, but were in a department car and following up on a case. The driver in the other car also died.
