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Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Friday that federal officials have not provided his office any information about the fatal shooting last month of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by immigration officers in Houston, so he plans to take the evidence his office has collected so far to a grand jury in the “next few weeks,” in part to compel the release of more details.

Teare said his office also may file a federal lawsuit to force the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to provide more information.

“We have now kind of put together as much physical evidence as we think we’re going to get and so the next step is to begin to get witnesses into the grand jury so that you get kind of a fuller picture of what eyewitnesses saw,” Teare said.

Although his office now knows the names of the four ICE agents who were pursuing the white van driven by Salgado Araujo early on July 7, Teare declined to identify them, citing grand jury proceedings that are typically secret until suspects have been indicted. Grand juries also have the power to subpoena agencies, including in the federal government, and conduct separate investigations. Teare said the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Texas Rangers and is conducting its own probe of the shooting, has received some information from DHS that it is sharing with his office to potentially take to the grand jury.

“A lot of our timing is going to be dependent on outside forces, on the cooperation we continue to get from the Texas Rangers, the cooperation we hope to get from DHS’s Office of Inspector General, the cooperation that we’re going to need from other individuals involved and so I really can’t put a true timetable on it,” he said, adding that the grand jury proceedings could ultimately result in a criminal indictment.

DHS’s Account of Salgado Araujo Killing Is “a Lie,” Witness Says

Teare, a veteran prosecutor, told the Tribune in the 25-minute interview that crucial aspects of ICE’s pursuit of Salgado’s van and his investigation of the shooting have contrasted sharply with other officer-involved shootings that the district attorney’s office has worked on in the past — even when they involved federal agencies.

The initial tip that set the fatal encounter into motion appeared to be incorrect. ICE agents said they were originally looking for at least one Guatemalan man with a prior deportation order who was also driving a white van in the same heavily Hispanic Houston neighborhood. Salgado and his three passengers........

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