A month after a man was shot and killed by a federal agent in Maine, his family learned that one of the officer’s bullets had struck his young daughter’s empty car seat.

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian man, was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on July 13 at an intersection in Biddeford.

“The only justification given for Johan’s death was that it was in the interest of public safety,” Sean Murphy, an attorney for the family, told some members of Congress on Tuesday. “You know what actually keeps the public safe? Not shooting innocent and law-abiding fathers whose only dream is to build a better life for his family.”

Murphy was one of several people who testified during a public forum focused on recent fatal ICE shootings.

The agent who shot Durán Guerrero was identified as David Brouillette by multiple people who know him. Brouillette has not responded to several requests for comment. The Department of Homeland Security has declined to identify the agent involved.

The forum on Tuesday was convened by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif. Since December, Blumenthal and Garcia have hosted five public forums focused on what they have described as “lawless and abusive tactics” by immigration officials under the Trump administration.

A spokesperson for DHS, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning about the scheduled forum.

Murphy told the lawmakers that Durán Guerrero had gone to bed early the night of July 12, sharing a quick kiss with his partner Karolina Alvarez while she folded their laundry.

“Neither of them had any clue that kiss was to be their last,” Murphy testified.

Since being retained by the family, Murphy said he’s met Durán Guerrero’s parents, who both attended a public hearing that was held in Biddeford last month by Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, and other House Democrats. Murphy recalled visiting the funeral home and hearing the mother’s cries.

Durán Guerrero’s body was repatriated to Colombia and his family there held a service earlier this month, according to attorney Benjamin Gideon, who is also representing the family.

Gideon said that he and Alvarez watched the service remotely from Maine. He said Alvarez also received several non-evidentiary items from the Office of the Maine Attorney General during an informational meeting on Aug. 27, which is when they learned about the bullet hole in the car seat.

Murphy testified that the attorney general’s office is “is the first and only governmental agency that has confirmed that they are investigating the deadly use of force by a federal agent.”

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to comment on their investigation Tuesday.

DHS announced in July that its Office of Inspector General was also conducting a routine investigation. Gideon and Murphy said they’ve heard nothing from the federal government in more than two months.

Vice President JD Vance told Maine reporters during a visit in August that the federal government was investigating. His office has not responded to requests for comment since then.

“Apparently, he thought he would blow smoke when he came to Maine,” Gideon said.

Murphy, who previously worked in Puerto Rico as a federal prosecutor, said Tuesday that he has not seen any efforts by the U.S. government to quickly preserve important digital evidence and interview potential witnesses.

“These are all considerations that were standard, but for whatever — well, for very obvious reasons — are not present any more,” Murphy said following a question form Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va. “And we need to bring them back.”

Congressional members also heard testimony on Tuesday from a mother whose son, Ruben Ray Martinez, was shot by ICE in Texas in March 2025, and the children of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was shot by ICE in Houston this summer. 

They heard from the parents of Renée Nicole Macklin Good, who was shot while observing federal agents in Minneapolis in January, and from a witness who recorded the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in the same city less than three weeks later.

“We were told that DHS was going to change,” Blumenthal said during the forum. “We were told it was going to be a more restrained agency. We were told it was going to cut down on violence. Again and again, those promises were proven to be false.”

Over the weekend, an ICE agent reportedly shot a 28-year-old man in Austin, Texas, while he was making a delivery for DoorDash. That man survived his injuries and was detained by ICE upon his release from the hospital.