Texas hunters who claimed they were shot by ‘illegal aliens’ actually shot each other

Two hunting guides leading a hunting party in Southern Texas this January claimed that immigrants illegally crossed the border and tried to rob their camp in the middle of the night, resulting in gunfire.

Hunting guide Walker Daugherty was hit in the arm and another member of the party, 59-year-old Edwin Roberts, was struck in the abdomen. Daugherty and fellow hunting guide Michael Bryant told authorities that the immigrants were trying to steal the RV they were using. According to friends and family, the wounded pair also claimed that the immigrants were trying to kill the entire party.

After family members set up a GoFundMe page for Daugherty’s medical bills which raised over $26,000, the Agricultural Commissioner of Texas, Sid Miller, shared the GoFundMe to his Facebook page as a message promoting President Trump‘s proposed border wall.

“This is why we need the wall and to secure our borders,” Miller wrote in a now-deleted post that was shared more than 6,500 times. “There are violent criminals and members of drug cartels coming in and it must put a stop to it before we have many more Walker Daughertys.”

Now, authorities are saying the story was a lie.

According to a report from CBS 7, Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez said that an investigation had found Daugherty and the other wounded hunter accidentally shot each other.

Authorities became suspicious after a sweep of the area where the incident occurred turned up “no evidence that suggests cross-border violence” and  “no sign of human pedestrian traffic leading to or from the ranch that night.”

“There were no bullet casings or projectiles from weapons other than those belonging to the individuals hunting on the ranch nor in the RV belonging to the hunting party,” the sheriff’s office told a local news outlet, according to The Washington Post.

Daugherty, Bryant and a group of their clients had been hunting at the Circle Dug Ranch, a 15,000-acre tract of valley land just a few miles from the Mexico border in Texas. On the night of Jan. 6, a deputy in the sheriff’s office responded to a call for a shooting, and when he arrived he found Daugherty and 59-year-old Edwin Roberts suffering from gunshot wounds.

Daughetry and Bryant were indicted by a grand jury on Wednesday for one charge each of using deadly conduct by discharging firearms in the direction of others, which is a 3rd-degree felony.

Featured image via CBS 7. To follow Sky Palma on Facebook, click here.