‘Uncommon’ FBI shooting that left victim dead still a mystery
Tragic ending to raid leaves unanswered questions for agency
The phone call came just a few hours after Ulises Valladares had been bound with duct tape and hauled from his home by kidnappers armed with guns.
On the other end was a man, speaking Spanish and claiming to be a member of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel. He demanded $20,000 and said Valladares and others would be killed if it wasn’t paid.
Then he put Valladares on the phone.
“Ulises advised he was fine but to gather up the money and not call police,” according to court documents filed in connection with the Conroe kidnapping.
It was the last time Valladares would speak to his brother.
The Conroe man was shot and killed the next day — still bound in duct tape, officials said — by one of the FBI agents trying to rescue him in an early morning operation in northeast Houston. His brother, Ernesto, wants answers about how it happened.
“My brother never had quarrels with anybody,” Ernesto Valladares said Friday, standing outside their home in Conroe. “He was peaceful. He had no arguments with anybody. He wouldn’t go out. He just dedicated himself to his life.”
“He didn’t know them at all,” he added. “He didn’t owe them anything.”
The shooting was the first agent-involved shooting in the Houston area in more than a decade, said Christina Garza, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Houston field office.
“It’s very uncommon,” she said.
The most recent incident was in Pasadena in 2005, when FBI agents attempted to arrest five MS-13 gang members and ended up shooting and killing one of the suspects.
Few details have emerged about the shooting this week. Local FBI officials have not provided information about the shooting or made Special Agent-in-Charge Perrye Turner available for comment. A call to the national FBI headquarters was not returned.
Citing agency policy and the
Federal Privacy Act, the office declined to identify the agent responsible for the shooting. The agent has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.
‘They are going to pay’
Ernesto Valladares remembered Ulises as a brother, a father and an example, and he will be seeking custody of his 12-year-old nephew, who was also bound by duct tape but left behind at the home.
The child lost his mother two years ago to cancer, he said.
“I am like a father to him,” Valladares said. “They’ve taken my brother; his mother has passed. They are going to have to give him back to me.”
Ernesto Valladares said his mother, who lives in Honduras, already knew about his brother’s death. He said he had no words for the men who kidnapped his brother.
“I can’t tell them nothing, but there is a God,” he said. “With him they are going to pay. I can’t do nothing; let God do everything.”
While rare, the FBI has weathered a number of highprofile national shootings in recent years, including one that occurred during a 2016 standoff between law enforcement officials and supporters of Ammon Bundy in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
As one of the anti-government land occupiers was trying to leave the standoff, law enforcement officials shot and killed him. An FBI agent allegedly lied about the incident to superiors and was later charged with making false statements and obstructing justice. He is awaiting trial in Oregon.
The agency also came under scrutiny after agents shot a Chechen man in 2013 as they were questioning him about the Boston Marathon bombings.
An internal report of shootings by FBI agents, employees, task force officers and other law enforcement officers working with the FBI found 493 shootings between 1993 and 2009 — of which 216 were accidental.
Of the 188 intentional shootings, just five were ruled “not in accordance” with the FBI’s Deadly Force Policy, according to the report, which noted that 145 “subjects” were killed or injured.
Nine agents died and 81 were injured. Four “others,” meaning bystanders or victims, were injured or killed in the shootings. In one incident, an FBI agent attempting to rescue a kidnapping victim fired a weapon into a vehicle as it drove towards the agent, hitting and killing the victim.
Among the incidents analyzed, 12 were at the hands of Houston-based agents. A third of those incidents were “intentional” discharges.
Overall, agent-involved shootings are “an extremely, extremely rare occurrence,” said Mike Anderson, who spent 17 years in the Houston field office, overseeing the office’s SWAT team for five years and serving as the assistant special agent-incharge. “We’ve not had a shooting here in Houston that the FBI was involved in since that MS-13 raid in 2005.”
Rich Garcia, a retired FBI agent and former special-agentin-charge of the Houston field office, called the shooting “tragic.”
“The FBI tries to do the utmost to make sure no one gets hurt,” he said, “regardless of whether they’re subject or victim, so the legal process can take its course.”
Breaking free to call police
Conroe police scoff at the claim that the kidnappers were members of the Gulf Cartel. That, they said, was a scare tactic.
Instead, police said there may be a family connection.
Three people — including a man identified as a member of the Tango Blast Houstone gang — were arrested. Two men were charged with kidnapping and aggravated robbery, and a woman who was at the Trinity Gardens home was charged with kidnapping. A fourth woman was questioned but has not been charged.
One of the suspects, Jimmy Tony Sanchez, 38, who sports a star-shaped tattoo on his face, was a documented member of the violent Tango Blast Houstone gang, according to a criminal justice source.
Nicholas Chase Cunningham, 42, is also charged with both counts. Sophia Perez Heath, 35, identified in court records as Cunningham’s girlfriend, faces one count of aggravated kidnapping.
All three are being held in the Montgomery County Jail. A judge Friday denied bail for Cunningham and Sanchez and set bail at $1 million for Heath.
Authorities said they are considering a more serious charge of felony murder.
Charging documents filed by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office detail the chaotic 20 or so hours between Valladares’ kidnapping and his death.
Valladares and his 12-yearold son were at the home on Tyler Lane they shared with Valladares’ brother, Ernesto Valladares, when the son heard pounding on the door about 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Two gunmen burst inside, demanding $8,000. They bound Valladares and his son with duct tape, and ransacked the home, scouring the mail and cabinets before hauling off an X-Box, a sword, a hat and a PlayStation.
The child, who was in Child Protective Services custody late Thursday, told investigators that one of the gunmen told Valladares that his brother owed them $8,000, though the brother later denied any debt.
The child also told investigators that his father told one of the attackers that he knew his parents, court records show.
They then placed a black sweater over Valladares’ head, and told his son they would drop him off on a nearby street corner. About 15 minutes later, the boy broke loose and alerted a neighbor, who called police.
Hours later, the phone call came to Ernesto Valladares from a phone number he said he didn’t recognize.
Conroe police alerted the FBI, who launched an investigation.
The phone call and three others ultimately led police and the FBI to a Best Western hotel in the League City, court records show.
Agents watching the hotel saw two men who matched the description of the kidnappers, and they moved for an arrest. Inside the hotel room, they found a cellphone matching the phone number that was used to call Ernesto Valladares.
Cunningham told agents that Valladares was being held at Heath’s home on Elbert Street, and identified her as his girlfriend, court records show.
‘Going to take some time’
Heath told FBI agents that Cunningham and Sanchez had brought Valladares to her home the previous night, with his hands still bound and his head covered.
She said Cunningham brought in a black handgun and left it on a dresser, according to court records.
Questions about the shooting remain.
In addition to the special FBI squad that investigates agentinvolved shooting, the Houston Police Department and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office are also working the case.
Garza, with the FBI, could not provide a timeline for when the agency’s investigation might conclude, or when they might provide additional details about the incident.
“The FBI is known for its meticulous work,” Garza said. “It’s going to take some time.”