Feds arrest suspected shooter of border patrol agent Brian Terry

(WJBK) - Authorities have arrested the suspected shooter in the 2010 killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose death exposed a bungled gun-tracking operation by the federal government.

Metro Detroit native Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010 in a gunfight between border patrol agents and drug cartel members along the US-Mexico border. It's taken over six years, but a fifth suspect, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, was arrested Wednesday in Mexico.

Four others have already been tried and convicted in connection with Agent Terry's murder.

Agent Terry's death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, an ATF operation in which the feds allowed criminals to buy guns with the intention of tracking them once they made their way into mexico.

Two of those guns were found at the scene of Agent Terry's murder.

"Hopefully it's the start of closure. Hopefully we finally get some answers and start holding those accountable for this project, Fast and the Furious; why it happened, why there was a purpose for it and why these people got killed," Agent Terry's brother Kent Terry tells us.

The agency lost most of the guns, including two that were found at scene of Terry's death. The operation set off a political firestorm and led Terry's family to file a lawsuit.

The government has heavily pursued prosecution of the men involved in the killing. It had offered a $250,000 reward for Osorio-Arellane.

Terry was part of a four-man team in an elite Border Patrol unit staking out the southern Arizona desert on a mission to find "rip-off" crew members who rob drug smugglers.

They encountered a five-man group of suspected marijuana bandits and identified themselves as police in trying to arrest them.

The men refused to stop, prompting an agent to fire non-lethal bean bags toward them. They responded by firing from AK-47-type assault rifles.

Terry was struck in the back and died shortly after.

A jury in Tucson in October 2015 found two men, Jesus Leonel Sanchez-Meza and Ivan Soto-Barraza, guilty on murder and other charges. Another man, Manual Osorio-Arellanes, pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2014.

A fourth man, Rosario Rafael Burboa-Alvarez, pleaded guilty to murder. He was not present during the shooting but is accused of assembling the rip crew.

Only Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga remains at large.

The Associated Press contributed to this report