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A collection of just shy of two dozen people furious at U.S. government efforts to deport illegal immigrants gathered outside a detention center in rural Johnson County on the symbolically significant July 4 to carry out a violent rebuke, prosecutors described to a jury in Fort Worth on Tuesday at a joint trial for nine defendants.
With a rifle, Benjamin Song, a former Marine Corps reservist, fired upon Alvarado police Lt. Thomas Gross just after Gross arrived at the center, prosecutors allege. A projectile entered his upper shoulder, left the back of his neck and took a path through tissue and muscle, but avoided vital organs.
Song confessed to three co-defendants, who have pleaded guilty, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Smith said in the government’s opening statement. The accomplices will testify at the trial, Smith forecast.
“They’re going to tell it to you,” Smith said of the expected testimony on Song’s admission.
Defense attorneys who represent eight of the nine defendants offered in their openings a radically different account of evidence they said would fall short of establishing a sophisticated conspiracy to commit violence.
Rather, many of the defense attorneys asserted, their clients intended to participate in nothing more than a noise demonstration to bring hope to detainees. One is a mechanical engineer; another operates a benign book club, the defense attorneys said.
Defense attorney Phillip Hayes, who represents Song, reserved his opening statement for a time later in the trial.
The indictment represents an attempt to prosecute citizens for their political beliefs, defense attorneys have argued.
Defense attorney Warren St. John, who represents Meagan Morris, said his client was present at the detention center but was not involved in a crime.
“She didn’t get out of the van one time,” St. John said in his opening statement.
Beyond Song and Morris, who is referred to as Bradford Morris in the indictment, the defendants are Autumn Hill, referred to as Cameron Arnold in the indictment, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto and Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada.
Gross took the witness stand for the government, recalling being shot, falling to the ground and returning fire at a moving silhouette.
The emotional toll of the shootings continues, the lieutenant testified.
“It’s a day I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life,” Gross said.
The trial is to continue on Wednesday with the government’s case.
This story was originally published February 24, 2026 at 10:42 PM.
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Emerson Clarridge
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