By Karen Gleason
On too many occasions, the Rio Grande has proved a deadly barrier for illegal immigrants, but there are some sections where the storied river can be crossed with relative ease and safety.
It is an instance of situational irony that one of those crossing points is a place where, less than 20 years ago, a homeowner shot and wounded a Mexican teenager, then shot and killed another.
Today, illegal immigrants routinely wade across the Rio Grande and emerge on the Texas bank on and near a riverside property once owned by Patrick Glenn Bordelon.
In November 1999, Bordelon, who claimed repeated trouble with youth from Mexico crossing the river and stealing his property, shot and killed a 16-year-old Mexican boy who, along with two companions, was trying to break into Bordelon’s house.
When he shot and killed the Mexican teen, Bordelon had already been charged with shooting and wounding another young Mexican who had been wading in the Rio Grande near Bordelon’s property.
Bordelon was charged with attempted murder in the first case and with murder in the second.
Then-Val Verde County Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan, a retired Customs officer, and then-District Attorney Tom Lee were pressured not to prosecute Bordelon in the attempted murder case.
Jernigan said he received numerous calls from constituents not to move ahead with the Bordelon case, and a petition containing more than 600 signatures was presented to Lee, calling on him not to move ahead with the prosecution.
Both Jernigan and Lee resisted the pressure, and support for Bordelon waned after he shot and killed the second youth.
Bordelon was eventually tried and found guilty of the lesser-included charge of aggravated assault in the first
shooting and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
Before the start of his trial in the murder case, Bordelon agreed to plead guilty to the offense of manslaughter and was sentenced to serve seven years in prison.
He was ordered to serve the sentences for the two convictions concurrently.
Bordelon sold his house along the Rio Grande in 2000 before his trials, according to property deed information available from Trueautomation.
The property where he once lived, where he shot and wounded one person and shot and killed another, changed hands again in 2005, then again in 2007, when it was sold to its current owner, identified as a resident of Odessa, Texas, though no one appears to be living in the house full-time.
