Every now and then you get a switch of direction out of the feds. They've charged a Venezuelan delivery driver in Texas with assaulting an officer, and the man they charged is the same guy who got shot by an ICE agent during the encounter. [Valley Central has the story]

Prosecutors announced the charge Tuesday. The man was behind the wheel of his car when an ICE agent shot him. The feds now say the driver's conduct during the stop amounts to assault on a federal officer, and that's the charge he's sitting on.

I've had enough borderline traffic come through my gate to know how fast these stops go sideways. A vehicle is a couple thousand pounds of steel, and you use it wrong around an officer, the law treats it as a weapon, same as a tire iron. The charge tells you what investigators think happened in the seconds before the shot was fired: they think the driver created the danger, and the agent didn't.

That part usually gets lost by the time a story hits the national outlets. Somebody gets shot, the headline runs, and the studio crowd in New York starts asking questions before the paperwork's dry. Then the investigation finishes and the facts come out, and they don't fit the story everybody already told. This charge is the facts catching up.

Assault on a federal officer is a serious count. This isn't a citation and a ride home. These cases usually end in prison time, and that would come on top of whatever his immigration status is worth in court.

Before anybody starts wailing about the poor delivery driver, remember what we don't know yet, and remember who's obligated to find it out. Agents working these stops don't pick their timing. They react to what's in front of them, and when a car does something a car shouldn't do, they answer with what they've got. Then the review process runs, and here it ran all the way to a criminal charge against the guy who took the bullet.

That sequence tells you something. Prosecutors don't hand out assault-on-an-officer charges as a courtesy. They file them when the evidence supports it, knowing every reporter in the country is watching.

The case works through federal court now. There will be a defense attorney, there will be filings, and eventually a trial or a plea. What there won't be is the version of events the cable people were hoping for. The paperwork already said so.

Out here we have a saying about drawing conclusions before the horse is out of the pen. Doesn't end well for the guy holding the gate.