An American driver is shot dead by a police officer in Mexico

An American man was killed when a Mexican police officer opened fire on the car he was driving in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, Mexican authorities said Monday.

A regional prosecutor in the state of Chihuahua, Carlos Manuel Salas, said the shooting happened on Sunday while the officer was accompanying a staff member of the prosecutor’s office, who was serving a warrant. The two were on foot when a Mustang with New Mexico plates suddenly accelerated in their direction, according to Mr. Salas. He said the officer opened fire as the driver tried to flee.

Mr. Salas said the officer was in custody and that the shooting, which was captured on video by a passenger in the car, would be investigated by the state attorney’s office’s internal affairs division. In a press conference, Mr. Salas described the incident as “regrettable” and urged the public to refrain from drawing conclusions until the investigation was complete.

But he appeared to offer a defense of the officer, whose name was not released. According to Mr. Salas, the vehicle was traveling at high speed and skidded as it approached the officer, nearly hitting him. The driver was wearing a hood, he said.

“Why speed up?” he asked. “Why do you have to drive at that speed?”

Mr. Salas argued that if something similar happened in another country, including the United States, the police could also respond with force.

Authorities have not identified the man who was killed, describing him only as a nursing assistant from El Paso. But the Mexican media reported whose name was Julián Alfredo Rodríguez Medina. News reports say the man and at least one of the two passengers in the car had family members who were staying nearby.

In an interview with the newspaper The Diarya man who identified himself as a brother of the driver, and who said he had been in the car, asked state officials to bring charges against the officer.

The man, who identified himself only as Jorge AR, said he and the other men in the car had been outside to get something to eat when they were shot. He said that they did not threaten and that they were at a considerable distance from the officer when he opened fire.

“At no time did we make any threat to him, nor did we shout at him, nor did we break the car,” El Diario quoted the man as saying.

Mr Salas, the prosecutor, said US officials had been informed of the shooting in accordance with protocol. A spokesman for the US Embassy said in a statement that officials were “closely monitoring the local authorities’ investigation into the reported killing”.

The incident is the latest in a series of violent deaths of Americans in Mexico.

Last week, a 62-year-old man from Rockford, Ill., was shot at a highway checkpoint in the state of Zacatecas that his family said was run by a criminal organization. A few days earlier, two US citizens and a Mexican national were shot dead in the state of Durango in an ambush that also left a American teenager critically injured.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has vowed to curb the violence that has gripped much of the country. While officials often point to the fight between drug-trafficking cartels as the cause of the bloodshed, experts say violence involving the police is still not uncommon.

The shooting of the American on Sunday generated a heated debate after the video recorded by the passenger was published on social media. Many have called for harsh consequences for the detained officer, and some commentators have threatened death.

On Monday, authorities announced an arrest in the Durango shooting, which occurred on December 27. They identified the suspect as Iram Uranga Armendáriz, and said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over a debt related to a plot of land.

Mr Uranga was accused of shooting two of the men in the head, then the other two – including the teenager – from behind as they tried to flee on foot. The teenager, Jason Peña, a 14-year-old from Chicago, was said to be in critical condition at a Houston hospital on Monday.

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed report.