Three construction workers imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after witnessing the murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Tuesday morning have independently rejected the agency’s claim that he attempted to run over a federal officer, describing instead an unprovoked fusillade by agents who surrounded the workers’ van and opened fire from the side.

The eyewitness accounts, published Friday by the *Washington Post*, obliterate the official story issued within hours of the killing by the Department of Homeland Security. All three men said no agent was ever positioned in front of or behind Lorenzo’s work van and that he never attempted to strike an officer or an ICE vehicle.

“They came in and started shooting from the sides,” attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said, summarizing the consistent accounts given separately by the three detained men.

In a handwritten statement, Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, said the DHS claim that Salgado Araujo attempted to “weaponize” the van to run over agents “is a lie.”

“It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over,” he wrote. “There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

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