Portland Police Bodycam Shows Border Patrol Agent Attempting to Tamper With Evidence
On Jan. 8, a Portland police officer’s body camera captured a U.S. Border Patrol agent attempting to remove an unfired rifle round from the scene of a shooting in a Portland medical office parking lot, according to a federal court defense memo filed Friday by Assistant Federal Public Defenders Michael Benson and Peyton Lee.
The incident occurred in the parking lot of the Portland Adventist Medical Office, where a Border Patrol agent had fired two shots into a pickup truck, wounding driver Luis Niño-Moncada and front-seat passenger Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras. According to Benson and Lee’s court filing, the Portland Police Bureau arrived quickly to secure the scene, with body camera footage showing an officer confronting the federal agent and preventing him from tampering with physical evidence. Sources familiar with the incident confirmed that the federal agent placed the live, unspent round back on the ground after the officer intervened.
Investigation and Federal Referrals
Portland police documented the confrontation in a report, though the Police Bureau declined to release the full document or the body camera footage in response to a public records request from The Oregonian/OregonLive, citing an ongoing investigation. The bureau released only a classified cover sheet referencing the medical office address and indicating the matter was referred to several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
When asked if the Oregon Department of Justice was investigating the alleged evidence tampering, department spokesperson Jenny Hansson stated that nothing could be shared while the investigation remained ongoing. The FBI declined to comment on the incident. The federal agent who allegedly handled the bullet was not the agent who fired into the pickup truck, which left Niño-Moncada with a wound to his upper left arm and a grazing chest injury, and Zambrano-Contreras with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Legal Proceedings and Prosecution Outcomes
The January shooting took place a day after the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration enforcement officer in Minneapolis, alongside other reports of aggressive vehicle stops by immigration officers. It remains unclear whether the alleged evidence tampering influenced the federal government’s subsequent prosecution of the wounded occupants of the truck.
In July, 33-year-old Niño-Moncada pleaded guilty to destruction of government property after admitting he rammed the pickup in reverse into an empty government rental car while attempting to escape federal agents who had followed and blocked him in the parking lot. Under a negotiated agreement, he agreed to pay $24,413 in restitution and is scheduled to be sentenced to time served for the nine months he spent in custody, followed by expected deportation to Venezuela.