Hunters blame ‘illegal aliens’ after shooting themselves

DALLAS • Hunting guides Walker Daugherty and Michael Bryant were leading a hunting party in southern Texas in early January, when they claimed immigrants illegally crossed the nearby Mexico border, converged on their camp in the middle of the night and tried to rob them.

Gunfire erupted. When the smoke cleared and the fight was over, Daugherty was bleeding from a shot to his abdomen. Another member of the party had been shot in the arm.

After being air lifted to the hospital, the men told authorities that immigrants who crossed the border from Mexico wanted to steal an RV some of the hunters were using. In statements made through friends and family, they went further, suggesting that the assailants wanted to kill everyone in the party, as the Albuquerque Journal reported.

A GoFundMe page set up by a family friend to cover Daugherty’s medical bills raised $ 26,300 from more than 200 donors.

But authorities say it was all a lie.

Daugherty and Bryant were indicted on one count each of using deadly conduct by discharging firearms in the direction of others. Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez told the station that an investigation had found Daugherty and the other injured hunter were struck by friendly fire. There was no sign, he said, that anyone else was involved.

Daugherty, Bryant and a group of their clients had been hunting at the Circle Dug Ranch, a 15,000- acre tract of valley land just a few miles from the Mexico border in Texas. On the night of Jan. 6, a deputy in the sheriff ’s office responded to a call for a shooting, and when he arrived he found Daugherty and 59- year- old Edwin Roberts suffering f rom gunshot wounds.

Authorities were suspicious from the beginning. Within days of the shooting, the sheriff ‘s office said there was “no evidence that suggests crossborder violence” and “no sign of human pedestrian traffic leading to or from the ranch that night.”

By then, however, the rum ours had already spread. A rancher and family friend in Arizona released a statement based on the Daugherty family’s account, describing the incident as a brutal, calculated attack by “illegal aliens.”

“The attack has t he family concerned that the attack was not just an attempt to rob the property,” the statement read. “They believe the assailants intended to kill all the party. The attackers were strategically placed around the lodge, and the men were fired upon from different areas.”

What really happened, Sheriff Dominguez said, was much simpler and less nefarious: Daugherty shot his client, and Bryant shot Daugherty.