Overview
- Santos Guerrero, 42, admitted in May 2026 to shooting a bald eagle at his Porter, Texas residence in October 2024.
- A U.S. magistrate accepted the plea and set a July 30 sentencing, with a possible one-year prison term and a $100,000 fine.
- Prosecutors say video showed the bird being shot and falling from a tree, which investigators matched to a tree at Guerrero’s property.
- Investigators found the eagle alive and took it to an animal hospital, where it was euthanized after a necropsy linked its wing damage and internal bleeding to the shot and the fall.
- The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act bars killing or possessing eagles without a permit, so prosecutors brought the case under that law despite the bird’s delisting as endangered.