Houston prosecutor says van substance was not illegal drugs

A substance found in the work van of a Mexican immigrant fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Houston tested negative for illegal drugs, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Friday, undercutting federal claims that the vehicle likely contained methamphetamine.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 51-year-old construction worker and father of three, was killed July 7 during a traffic stop that ICE has described as life-threatening. The agency has said Salgado Araujo “weaponized” his vehicle and that an officer fired in self-defense. The other men in the van have disputed that account.

“We can confirm the substance found in Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s van tested negative for narcotics / illicit drugs,” District Attorney Sean Teare’s office said in a statement. “We have notified Salgado Araujo’s family because we felt they had the right to know.”

The office said it would not provide further details, citing an ongoing investigation.

After the shooting, an FBI agent said in a court affidavit that small bags visible inside the van contained a white crystal-like substance that appeared consistent with methamphetamine. The affidavit included photos taken from outside the vehicle and was used to obtain a search warrant for the van.

The FBI said Friday it had no comment on the test results. ICE referred a request for comment to the Department of Homeland Security, which NBC News reported did not immediately respond.

Lawyers and representatives for Salgado Araujo’s family had said the substance was likely granulated salt used by outdoor workers with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix in extreme Texas heat. Ruby L. Powers, an attorney for Salgado Araujo’s brother Victor, who was taken into custody after the shooting, said full lab results expected next week would confirm what the substance was.

“An unproven claim was allowed to circulate before it was tested, and the way it was made public did real damage, diverting attention from what actually matters in this case,” Powers said. “Lorenzo was shot, and no lab report answers for that.”

David Donatti, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, which is representing Salgado Araujo’s family, accused the government of shaping a false account of the case.

“The government has demonstrated that it is more interested in creating a false narrative than in seeking the truth,” Donatti said. “The Salgados deserve real answers about what happened.”

The district attorney’s announcement came hours after the Congressional Hispanic Caucus held a hearing in Houston on the shooting. Teare said at the hearing that drug involvement would have been out of character for the people in the van and criticized the quick unsealing of the FBI search warrant request before a grand jury reviewed the evidence.

“To unseal it the day it’s signed, never seen it in my 20 years,” Teare said.

Salgado Araujo was driving himself and three others to a construction site when the confrontation occurred, according to lawyers involved in the case. The government has not said narcotics activity was a reason for the traffic stop, and the Department of Homeland Security has not indicated that anyone in the van had a prior criminal history or a connection to controlled substances.

DHS has said Salgado Araujo tried to evade arrest and attempted to ram ICE personnel. Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, who represents two other men in the van, said Salgado Araujo never tried to harm law enforcement and called the suggestion that he was involved with drugs “absurd.”

At the hearing, Salgado Araujo’s son Lorenzo Salgado Jr. said DHS initially said ICE had targeted his father, then acknowledged he was not the intended target. He also said the claim that his father weaponized the van was disputed by the three men inside and that available surveillance footage “so far, does not appear to show” it.

DHS has said ICE personnel at the scene did not have body cameras. The officer who fired has not been named. The FBI, ICE’s internal oversight office and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office are investigating the shooting.