Lawsuit settled in 2022 shooting death of a migrant in West Texas, but no criminal charges filed yet

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EL PASO — Prosecutors have not filed charges against the former warden of a West Texas migrant detention facility who police say fatally shot a Mexican man nearly three years ago and injured a woman with him.

A lawsuit on behalf of the victims against Michael Sheppard’s now-former employer, La Salle Corrections, was recently settled. The case was scheduled to go to trial in an El Paso federal court on Tuesday. The terms of the settlement were not publicly released.

On the night of Sept. 27, 2022, police say Sheppard, then 60 and the warden of the West Texas Detention Center, shot twice at a group of 13 migrants hiding behind brush in Sierra Blanca, about 100 miles east of El Paso, killing 22-year-old Jesús Iván Sepúlveda Martínez and injuring Brenda Berenice Casias Carrillo, 31 at the time.

The group had stopped at a reservoir to find water, near an area where people often hunted, according to the police report and court documents.

Sheppard’s brother, Mark Sheppard, who at the time worked as a detention officer for the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office, told police that they were hunting for animals.

Lawyers for the Sheppards and La Salle Corrections didn’t return a phone message from The Texas Tribune. But Michael Sheppard’s lawyer has previously said the shooting was a hunting accident.

After the shooting, the brothers drove to a local water board meeting. Michael Sheppard was later fired from his job at the detention center and the brothers were released from jail after posting bond. They have moved back to their home state of Florida.

With no criminal charges filed against either brother in the shooting, Sepúlveda’s family and Casias filed a lawsuit in February 2024 against La Salle Corrections, a company that runs 18 correctional facilities in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. The facility in Sierra Blanca is owned by Hudspeth County but run by La Salle Corrections.

Christopher Benoit and Lynn Coyle, the lawyers representing Sepúlveda’s parents, common-law wife and child, say in court documents that La Salle Corrections should be held liable because Michael Sheppard was working for the company at the time of the shooting. Court documents said he would attend water board meetings in his official capacity as warden.

Benoit, in an email, said the “details of the case resolution are confidential.”

Since the shooting, prosecutors have shared few details about the case and have not explained why they have opted not to file charges.

Former El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, who Gov. Gregg Abbott appointed after the previous prosecutor resigned amid allegations of misconduct, has previously said that the delay was partially because of a simultaneous federal investigation into the shooting that created a “tug of war” between the state and the federal government about which office would prosecute first.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in El Paso, which also has not filed charges, didn’t respond to emailed questions from The Texas Tribune. Current El Paso District Attorney James Montoya also declined to comment.

“This case is not one that DA Montoya feels comfortable discussing publicly while it remains pending. There are a lot of factors at play that call for discretion from this Office,” said Stephanie Valle, a spokesperson for the DA’s office.

According to a probable cause affidavit from the Texas Department of Public Safety, migrants in the group told police that when they stopped at the reservoir, they saw a truck pass, then stop and back up. They hid behind brush and heard someone yell in Spanish, “Come out you sons of bitches, little asses,” the affidavit says.

Michael Sheppard then got out of the truck with a shotgun, leaned against the hood and fired two rounds, the affidavit said.

“Did you get him?” Mark Sheppard asked his brother, the affidavit says. Mark Sheppard changed “him” to “it,” while talking to a state police officer after the shooting, and claimed the brothers were hunting animals and didn’t know they had fired at people, the affidavit says.

Police investigators checked footage from nearby cameras and identified the truck, which police later found parked at Michael Sheppard’s house. He told police the truck belonged to him and that no one else drove the vehicle, but declined to speak to officers, the report says.

Mark Sheppard initially told the officers that he wasn’t with his brother at the time of the shooting but “later changed his story and admitted” he was with Michael Sheppard, the report says. Mark Sheppard also told officers they had stopped near the reservoir looking to shoot “ducks, then changed it to birds and then to a javelina,” the report says.

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