ASU journalism students produce documentary on federal shooting

PHOENIX — Last April in a retirement community near Ahwatukee, what was supposed to be a routine arrest quickly went haywire.

Homeland Security Investigations — part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — became engaged in a car chase that ended in a shootout with human smuggling suspect, Warren Jose.

How and why did all this happen?

Arizona State University students were determined to find out.

Starting in September, ASU’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism started digging deep through public records after HSI refused to answer students’ questions regarding the incident.

Students like Derek Hall turned their work into a documentary called “Homeland Secrets.”

The documentary details how investigators followed Jose’s SUV, eventually engaging him in a gunfight.

“[The SUV] eventually made its way into Ahwatukee as the special response team was tracking it,” Hall said.

“The agents chose to execute a maneuver called a ‘pinch maneuver’ to stop the vehicle, execute the arrest warrant.”

“That maneuver went wrong, and then that’s when the shootout unfolded,” Hall added.

After Hall and his fellow students obtained audio of all the gunshots from a neighbor’s home, their executive editor, Maud Beelman, encouraged them to find a ballistics expert to listen to it.

“We don’t know what we’re hearing from it, and police didn’t analyze this,” Beelman said.

“This is the one opportunity we might have to have a truly independent accounting of what happened.”

That expert identified Warren as having fired an AK-47 at federal agents

It was also revealed that the agents returned four times as many shots as Jose had fired.

Hall reports the federal agents had little training and accountability for such a shooting that hospitalized Warren and killed a woman in his car whom agents were not targeting.

“If something does go wrong, there needs to be recourse there,” Hall said.

“I hope that our story spurs further reporting to accomplish those things.”

Beelman says her students also learned “both the complexity of the investigative reporting the value of it to society and democracy, and the potential power of it if it’s done right.”

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