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U.S. trucker nabbed with ammo in Mexico is freed

Jabin Bogan receives a kiss from his mother, Aletha Smith, right, during a news conference shortly after returning to the United States following his last week release from a Mexican maximum security prison. (Associated Press: VICTOR CALZADA/The El Paso Times)

The Associated Press




"Some days I gave up hope. Some days I felt like God was, to be honest in my heart, like God was laughing. Like he was just punishing me for no reason. I felt like just giving up," he said during a brief news conference in El Paso shortly after arriving back in the U.S.

Bogan tearfully thanked his supporters, and said that at times he felt like taking his own life or someone else's.

"I was the only black American person in the whole prison. God brought me through and I made it," he said.







Negative PSP report?






He said Friday that when he acknowledged to the agents he had ammunition, "they said, 'in this side of the country it's illegal to have bullets.' And that's when everything went upside down they took me in and never let me out."

During his trial, Mexican customs agents contradicted prosecutors' claim that Bogan had 268,000 bullets hidden under the floorboards of his 18-wheeler's trailer when he was arrested. Agents testified in June that Bogan was trying to make a U-turn back into the U.S. when they found the ammunition bundled on top of wooden pallets inside the trailer.

Bogan was arrested less than 100 feet from a giant billboard that reads, "no more weapons." The sign, unveiled by Mexican President Felipe Calderon two months before Bogan was caught, was made out of seized high-caliber rifles and ammunition.







