Mexican Beauty Queen Killed During Drug CartelShootout (updated)
Mexican Beauty Queen Killed During Drug Cartel Shootout
Nov 26, 2012 10:34 PM EST
http://images.franchiseherald.com/da...mage.jpg?w=600 Maria Susana Flores
A Mexican beauty queen has been shot and killed during a gun battle between soldiers and the gang of drug cartels she was traveling with in northern Mexico, according to media reports.
The beauty queen, Maria Susana Flores Gamez, was found dead on Saturday on a road near the drug-filled state of Sinaloa which is in the north of Mexico, according to the Associated Press. A gun was found near her body but it is unclear whether she had used it.
The beauty queen, 20, was the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa. Two other men, who are drug cartel members, were also found lying dead near her body.
''She was with the gang of criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout,'' state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. ''That's what we're going to have to investigate.''
In addition to the Woman of Sinaloa pageant, she had participated in the Our Sinaloa Beauty 2012 beauty pageant. Organizers of that contest released a statement, offering their condolences to her family, which received her body Monday.
"We are dismayed by the news -- a beautiful young person, happy, and with a big future ahead of her, " the pageant organizers said. "Rest in peace Susy."
This is the third time in which a beauty queen or pageant contestants shows ties to Mexico's drug cartels, a theme so common it was the subject of a critically acclaimed 2011 movie.
In ''Miss Bala,'' Mexico's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of this year's Academy Awards, a young woman competing for Miss Baja California becomes an unwilling participant in a drug-running ring, finally getting arrested for deeds she was forced into performing.
Mexican Beauty Queen Killed During Drug Cartel Shootout : Franchise Herald
Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez killed in shootout
Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez killed in shootout
4:40 PM, Nov 26, 2012
http://cmsimg.clarionledger.com/apps...illed-shootout
In this April 26, 2012 photo, Maria Susana Flores Gamez poses for a photo for a story about upcoming representation of Mexico at a beauty pageant in China, in Culiacan, Mexico. Flores, who was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February, was killed in northern Mexico on Nov. 24, 2012 during a running gun battle between soldiers and the gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with. / Gladys Serrano, El Debate/AP Photo
CULIACAN, MEXICO — A 20-year-old state beauty queen was killed during a running gun battle between soldiers and the gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with in northern Mexico, the chief prosecutor of the state of Sinaloa said Monday.
In a scene reminiscent of the 2011 movie "Miss Bala" — or "Miss Bullet" — the body of Maria Susana Flores Gamez was found lying near an assault rifle on a rural road in a mountainous area of the drug-plagued state. It was unclear if she had used the weapon.
"She was with the gang of criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout," state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. "That's what we're going to have to investigate."
The doe-eyed, slender brunette was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February. She had earlier competed for the other, more prestigious state beauty contest, Our Beauty Sinaloa, but didn't win.
Higuera said Flores Gamez was traveling in one of the vehicles that engaged soldiers in an hours-long chase and running gun battle on Saturday. Higuera said two other members of the drug gang were killed and four were detained.
The shootout began when the gunmen opened fire on a Mexican army patrol. Soldiers gave chase and cornered the gang at a safe house near the town of Mocorito. They escaped, and the gunbattle continued along a nearby roadway, where the gang's vehicles were eventually stopped. Six vehicles, drugs and weapons were seized following the confrontation.
It was at least the third instance in which a beauty queen or pageant contestants have been linked to Mexico's violent drug gangs.
In 2008, former Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga was stripped of her crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant, after she was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. She was later released without charges.
Zuniga was detained in western Mexico in late 2010 along with seven men, some of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $53,300 with them inside a vehicle.
In 2011, a Colombian former model and pageant contestant was detained along with Jose Jorge Balderas, an accused drug trafficker and suspect in the 2010 bar shooting of Salvador Cabanas, a former star for Paraguay's national football team and Mexico's Club America. She was also later released.
Higuera said Flores Gamez has been turned over to relatives for burial.
"This is a sad situation," Higuera told a local radio station. She had been enrolled in media courses at a local university, and had been modeling and pageants since at least 2009.
Javier Valdez, the author of a 2009 book about narco ties to beauty pageants entitled "Miss Narco," said "this is a recurrent story."
"There is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry itself," Valdez said.
"It is a question of privilege, power, money, but also a question of need," said Valdez. "For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn't offer many opportunities for young people."
Sometimes drug traffickers seek out beauty queens, but sometimes the models themselves look for narco boyfriends, Valdez said.
"I once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco boyfriend," he said. "She practically took out a classified ad saying 'Looking for a Narco'."
The stories seldom end well. In the best of cases, a beautiful woman with a tear-stained face is marched before the press in handcuffs. In the worst of cases, they simply disappear.
"They are disposable objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed."
Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez killed in shootout | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com
People from Mexico come here because they want what the culture of this country has produced, but they refuse to embrace that culture and embrace and propagate the corrupt culture that they came from. JMO
Fast and Furious gun found at Mexican crime scene
By Sharyl Attkisson /
CBS News/ December 18, 2012, 12:38 PM
Another weapon from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency's controversial Operation Fast and Furious was recently recovered at a Mexican crime scene, CBS News has learned. Congressional investigators say the crime scene was likely where a recent shootout took place between reported Sinaloa drug cartel members and the Mexican military, in which Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed.
According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Justice Department did not notify Congress of the Fast and Furious firearm recovery in November, even though Grassley has requested an accounting of weapons that surface from the case. During Fast and Furious, ATF allowed more than 2,000 weapons, including giant .50-caliber guns, to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. Other so-called "gunwalking" operations by ATF let hundreds more guns hit the street. Most of them have never been recovered.
The latest known recovery is a Romanian AK-47-type WASR-10 rifle. It was picked up at a crime scene Nov. 23 in Ciudad Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Mexico. That's the same area and weekend of the shootout involving Flores Gamez's death. A trace report shows the rifle was purchased by Uriel Patino, the Fast and Furious suspect who allegedly bought more than 700 weapons while under ATF's watch. Records show Patino bought the rifle and nine other semi-automatic rifles at an Arizona gun shop March 16, 2010.
Grassley has sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting more information, and asking whether the officials were planning to notify Congress "that a Fast and Furious weapon had been recovered."
The Justice Department provided no immediate response to CBS News.
Two other Fast and Furious AK-47-type rifles were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. In September 2011, ATF estimated that Fast and Furious weapons had been recovered at eight violent crimes in Mexico. As CBS News has reported, guns trafficked under ATF's watch in a separate investigation were also used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico in February 2011. The families of both Terry and Zapata are suing government officials for alleged negligence and related claims.
Fast and Furious gun found at Mexican crime scene - Political Eye - CBS News
