Javier Vega Jr., 36, a United States Border Patrol agent, was shot and killed on August 3, 2014, while off duty and fishing near Santa Monica, Texas, with his wife, children, and parents. Two men approached the family and attempted to rob them at gunpoint; when Vega tried to draw his service weapon he was shot in the chest and died shortly afterward. His father, Javier Vega Sr., was shot in the hip as he returned fire at the attackers.

The two assailants, identified as Gustavo Tijerina Sandoval and Ismael Hernandez Vallejo, fled but were arrested the next day and charged with capital murder, attempted capital murder, and other crimes. Investigators later linked the pair to numerous similar robberies carried out at the direction of a Mexican cartel.

Sandoval was sentenced to death on June 5, 2018, and Hernandez Vallejo received a fifty-year prison sentence on January 15, 2019. Vega’s death was redesignated as in line of duty by the National Border Patrol Council, and a street in La Feria, Texas, and a Border Patrol checkpoint in Sarita, Texas, were renamed in his honor.