A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who allegedly fatally shot a Colombian man during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday has been described by some former acquaintances and family members as having a history of aggressive behavior and troubling statements,<\/p>\n
Ashley Brouillette told NPR that her former husband, David Brouillette, was the ICE officer who allegedly shot Joan Dur\u00e1n Guerrero four times during the attempted traffic stop. She said she learned he was the officer involved after he contacted her on Wednesday and asked her to speak positively about his character.<\/p>\n
“He asked me to basically say good things about him and not say anything negative,” Ashley Brouillette told NPR. “I told him I was not going to lie for him. He also asked me not to discuss the abuse in our marriage, and I told him again that I would not lie.”<\/p>\n
David Brouillette did not respond to NPR\u2019s requests for comment. An ICE spokesperson said the agency would neither confirm nor deny whether he was the officer involved in Dur\u00e1n Guerrero\u2019s death. ICE spokesperson Lauren Bis said in an email that the officer involved has “nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience” and has completed required training.<\/p>\n
Scott Collins, who said he was David Brouillette\u2019s close friend during high school in Maine, told NPR that Brouillette had a tendency toward confrontation. Collins also testified on Ashley Brouillette\u2019s behalf during divorce proceedings. Attorneys for David Brouillette said the two men were once friends but that their relationship ended after Collins became jealous of Brouillette\u2019s career success.<\/p>\n
“He had a habit of looking for fights,” Collins said. “If he saw something online that he disagreed with, he would go after the person and start an argument.”<\/p>\n
Collins also alleged that Brouillette used racist language during high school, including anti-Black slurs. Ashley Brouillette said she believes racism may have been a factor in the circumstances surrounding Dur\u00e1n Guerrero\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
“He has shown racist behavior,” she said, adding that Brouillette had a nickname in high school that referenced his race.<\/p>\n
Ashley Brouillette said she has known David Brouillette since they were teenagers and described incidents of violence during their marriage, which lasted from 2007 to 2009.<\/p>\n
She told NPR that during one argument, Brouillette allegedly entered the bathroom while holding a firearm and threatened to harm her. She acknowledged there were no police reports confirming that specific incident and said she later withdrew some complaints she had made to authorities.<\/p>\n
“Even after everything that happened, he was still someone I depended on because he was all I knew,” she said. “I would take back what I had said, and the police would not move forward.”<\/p>\n
She said fear and intimidation prevented her from speaking publicly for many years.<\/p>\n
Ashley Brouillette also provided NPR with a voicemail message from November that she said was left by Brouillette after she filed for a restraining order. In the recording, he allegedly made violent remarks about her and members of her family.<\/p>\n
During their divorce proceedings in 2009, Ashley said she contacted Brouillette\u2019s platoon leader in the Maine Army National Guard and attempted to provide documents regarding his reported mental health diagnoses. She said her concerns were dismissed as the claims of a “petty ex-wife.”<\/p>\n
NPR said it contacted the Maine National Guard for comment but did not immediately receive a response.<\/p>\n
When Brouillette told Ashley late last year that he had been hired by ICE, she said she initially did not believe him.<\/p>\n
“I honestly thought he was being unrealistic, and I didn’t believe it,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ashley Brouillette questioned whether a full background review had been conducted before his hiring, saying she believed officials may have found previous allegations of violent behavior.<\/p>\n
She pointed to a 2022 incident in which she said police and child protective services responded after Brouillette allegedly injured his then-13-year-old daughter during an altercation.<\/p>\n
Court records from 2021 show that Brouillette was temporarily prohibited from possessing firearms. In those filings, his second ex-wife, Lucinda Brouillette, alleged that his behavior toward their daughter had become increasingly aggressive.<\/p>\n
In one court document, Lucinda Brouillette described an incident in which she alleged he grabbed their daughter\u2019s feet, pulled her from bed, and questioned whether she now considered his actions physically abusive.<\/p>\n
Ashley Brouillette said she is deeply affected by the death of Dur\u00e1n Guerrero and hopes speaking publicly will encourage further attention to concerns she previously raised.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I tried to raise awareness about his mental health issues before and I wasn’t heard,” she said. “Now I need to speak up and hopefully prevent something like this from happening again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who allegedly fatally shot a Colombian man during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ice-agent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}