El Paso Border Patrol agent shot in scuffle with gunman outside taco restaurant

An off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent reportedly was attempting to disarm a man with a gun when he was shot outside a taco restaurant in East El Paso over the weekend.

Agent Matthew Ross, 38, of El Paso, was hospitalized in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the upper left chest that punctured a lung and broke a rib, according a GoFundMe online fundraiser page.

Ross was wounded during a struggle with another man at about 2:45 a.m. Saturday outside Taqueria El Cometa at 9529 Viscount Blvd. next to Interstate 10, an El Paso police spokesman said. The restaurant is open until 4 a.m. and is a popular spot for late-night eats.

Ross is a member of the Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue, a specially-trained special operations unit better known as BORSTAR, according to the fundraising page.

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On Monday, the page already had surpassed its $10,000 goal with more than $16,500 in donations, a day after it was created.

There had been no arrests announced as of Monday afternoon as police detectives with the Crimes Against Persons Unit continued their investigation. Police officials have not disclosed details on what led up to the altercation.

Border Patrol agent wanted to save others from harm, fundraiser says

According to an account described in the online fundraiser for Ross, shortly after the agent arrived at the restaurant, some customers got into an argument and then a fight. One of the men arguing left but returned a short time later, standing outside a window while holding a pistol.

"Without hesitation, Matthew Ross attempted to intervene to prevent the individual from harming those he was arguing with along with possibly other bystanders in the busy restaurant," the fundraiser states.

Ross quickly got up from his seat, went outside and attempted to "incapacitate" the man with the gun by wrestling him from behind. During the struggle, Ross was shot in the upper left chest, the fundraiser states.

Ross was not in uniform and appears to be wearing a T-shirt, a baseball cap and shorts on a cellphone video of the altercation circulating on social media.

The 20-second video shows a man and a woman standing in front of a window when a second man (Ross) exits the restaurant, walks behind the man and grabs a hold of him in a brief scuffle before a gunshot rings out.

"He (expletive) shot him, friend," a woman, apparently filming the video, says to another woman as the camera cuts away with the wounded man lying on the asphalt.

The video does not show what occurred earlier or why the person started filming. What the men might have said, if anything, is not heard.

Was El Cometa shooting self-defense?

Some commenters on social media argued that the shooter might have been defending himself. But legally, self-defense claims can be very tricky, taking into account the totality of the circumstances.

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There was an El Paso case with some similarities a few years ago.

In 2018, an El Paso jury found a man not guilty in the 2017 fatal stabbing of an off-duty Border Patrol agent in the parking lot of the Union Draft House in the far East Side.

The trial focused on who was the aggressor in the fight. Prosecutors claimed the agent was killed in an unprovoked attack, while defense lawyers argued the agent was drunk and was stabbed in the eye in a case of self-defense.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso Border Patrol agent shot in scuffle outside taco restaurant