By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Cruz Velazquez Acevedo was just 16 years old when he began screaming in pain and convulsing after drinking liquid methamphetamine shortly after crossing the U.S. Mexico border to San Diego.
According to a lawsuit filed about three-and-a-half years after his death, Border Patrol agents told Acevedo to drink the amber-colored liquid to prove it wasn’t laced with drugs, the Washington Post reports.
A surveillance video shows Acevedo taking four sips from a drink he insisted was apple juice.
“My heart! My heart!” he screamed before dying two hours later, according to court records.
The U.S. has agreed to pay Acevedo’s family $1 million win the wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the agency and two border officers.
His family’s attorney, Eugene Iredale, acknowledged Acevedo broke the law, but he said, “It wasn’t a death penalty case.”
“To cause him to die in a horrible way that he did is something that is execrable.”
