Family attorney says substance was homemade electrolyte mixture for construction crew
U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz confirmed in a statement to The Texas Tribune that forensic tests on a “white crystal-like substance” found inside the van of a man shot and killed by immigration officers in Houston last month showed the material was not methamphetamine. The Texas Tribune reported the disclosure Thursday.
Reitz did not say what the substance actually was. An attorney for the dead man’s family, David Donatti, has identified the material as a homemade electrolyte mixture that Salgado Araujo and his construction crew used to stay hydrated in the grueling summer heat.
The fatal shooting occurred July 7. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in unmarked vehicles pursued Salgado Araujo’s white work van through the streets of Houston and then shot him through the window of the van, according to the federal account of the incident.
Salgado Araujo, 52, had been driving his construction crew, including his brother, to a construction site at the time of the shooting.
The substance was recovered from inside Salgado Araujo’s white work van after the July 7 shooting. Federal authorities had earlier described the material as “white crystal-like” without identifying what it was.
The negative test result removes methamphetamine as a possibility but does not, on its own, resolve what the substance actually was. Reitz’s statement to The Texas Tribune did not elaborate on what the substance was determined to be.
Donatti said Salgado Araujo and his crew used the mixture to cope with the Texas heat while working construction. The family attorney’s identification was the public characterization of the substance before Reitz’s disclosure this week.
The federal prosecutor’s disclosure leaves the family attorney’s electrolyte-mixture characterization as the only public identification of the material. Reitz’s confirmation came more than a month after the July 7 fatal shooting.