SUNLAND PARK, New Mexico — In a scene out of the Wild West, FBI agents slugged it out with alleged train bandits aboard a boxcar, foiling a suspected robbery along the tracks running above the Mexico-U.S. border, the FBI said on Friday.
According to Reuters, two FBI agents were injured in the Thursday night incident and were in critical but stable condition after they were jumped by about 10 people and a fight ensued in a boxcar. Fifteen suspected bandits were arrested, said FBI spokesman, Al Cruz.
“The agents were beaten with a variety of objects,” Cruz said.
Several federal agents were aboard the Union Pacific freight train that was carrying consumer goods from Southern California to the East Coast. They were acting on a tip that bandits were going to strike, Cruz said.
Some of the alleged bandits were arrested at the scene while the others were apprehended later. They face charges such as assaulting federal officers and violating U.S. immigration laws.
“The train was carrying a variety of consumer goods,” said Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE:UNP – News) spokesman Mark Davis. He said that nothing was taken from the train.
Some of the suspected bandits apparently bordered the train as it slowed down along a bend in Sunland Park, just north of the Mexican border and to the west of El Paso, Texas.
According to Sunland Park police, gangs of train robbers used to operate in the area in the 1990s and the area was considered a hotbed for train-cargo theft.
Capt. Camilo Calzada, with the Sunland Park Police, said the gangs would board trains several hundred miles (kilometers) away and strike near Sunland Park, where they could jump off with their booty and make a quick crossing into Mexico.
The local sheriff’s department maintains a posse on horseback that would give chase to the bandits.
El Paso, which is only a few minutes drive from Sunland Park, had a reputation at the turn of the 20th century as a lawless gunslinging town, says historian Leon Metz.
He said there were few train robberies on the U.S side of the border, but the Mexican side had a reputation about a century ago of ruthlessness toward the railroads.
“Oh, they’d take anything off those trains, burn them, turn them right over on the tracks,” Metz said.