Thread: FBI seeks suspect after US consular official shot in Mexico

FBI seeks suspect after US consular official shot in Mexico

Unidentified official treated at hospital after shooting on Friday night in Guadalajara, prompting FBI to offer $20,000 reward for information

@DuncanTucker

Saturday 7 January 2017 11.19 EST
Last modified on Saturday 7 January 2017 12.04 EST



A US consular official was shot in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Friday night, prompting the FBI to offer a $20,000 reward for information that leads to identifying the suspect.
Guadalajara’s El Informador newspaper reported that the victim, not named in the report or by the consulate, was being treated at a local hospital for a gunshot wound in the upper chest.

CCTV footage released by the consulate showed a well built, light skinned man in gym clothes paying at a machine for a parking ticket at 6.16pm. He was immediately followed by a man in a purple T-shirt.

A second video shows the man in purple loitering by the car park exit before pulling out a pistol, firing once and running away.
“The FBI offers a reward of $20,000 for information that leads to the identification of the subject who shot a United States consular official today in Guadalajara,” the consulate said in a statement.

“Please call the United States Embassy in Mexico City if you recognise him at (01-55)5080-2000.”

The US State Department has issued a travel warning to Americans for Jalisco, the western state where Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, is located. Citing “continued instability”, the department prohibits government officials from “intercity travel after hours” and from using certain highways or stopping in specific towns.

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1/3 El FBI ofrece una recompensa de $20,000 dólares por información que lleve a la identificación del sujeto que disparó https://twitter.com/USCGGuadalajara/status/817623466287300610 …
9:28 AM - 7 Jan 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...al-shot-mexico

Gunman shoots, wounds US consular official in Mexico

By Mark Stevenson | AP

January 7 at 12:20 PM
MEXICO CITY — Mexican prosecutors said Saturday they are searching for a gunman who opened fire on an official of the U.S. consulate in the western city of Guadalajara.
The Attorney General’s Office said Saturday the official was wounded in the attack Friday in Guadalajara.

Surveillance video of the attack shows the gunman following the official in a parking garage. The official, whose name was not released, was dressed in shorts.
The shooting appeared to be a direct attempt to kill the consular employee.

The attacker doesn’t appear to try to approach the official while he is walking, but instead waits for him to exit the parking garage in his vehicle and fires a round into the car’s windshield.

The consulate said on its Facebook page that the FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information on the attacker.

U.S. consular employees and other U.S. agents have been attacked in Mexico in the past; the attackers have usually argued the attacks were cases of mistaken identity.

In 2014, a Mexican gang leader was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 2010 slayings in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, of a U.S. consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another employee.

Prosecutors said Arturo Gallegos Castrellon was in charge of a team of assassins with the Barrio Azteca, a gang allied with the Juarez drug cartel, and had ordered the three slayings.
The murders of U.S. consulate employee Leslie Ann Enriquez Catton, her husband, Arthur Redfels, and Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, the husband of another consulate employee, as they left a children’s birthday party were a mistake, former gang members testified during the trial.

Redfels was driving a white SUV that was very similar to a vehicle that Gallegos Castrellon had marked as a target for his team of assassins because they thought it belonged to members of the rival Sinaloa cartel.

In 2012, uniformed police pumped 152 bullets into a U.S. Embassy vehicle carrying two CIA officers and a Mexican Navy captain. The police officers, who wounded the Americans and face attempted murder charges, initially said the people they attacked were in uniform and marked cars, and that they had responded to fire from the SUV. But details of the attorney general’s investigation said those attacked were in street clothes, riding in unmarked vehicles (including two of their personal cars) and under order at all times from their commanding officers.

A Mexican drug cartel lieutenant pleaded guilty in 2013 to murder and attempted murder of an officer or employee of the United States in the Feb. 15, 2011, shootings of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The attackers acknowledged they were members of a Los Zetas Cartel hit squad and directly participated in the attack, which resulted in the death of ICE agent Jaime Zapata and the wounding of his colleague Victor Avila, both based in Texas.

According to court documents, a commander in Los Zetas Cartel tried to hijack the agents’ armored government vehicle as it was driving on Highway 57 in San Luis Potosi. After hit squads forced the vehicle off the road and surrounded it, the Zetas commander ordered the U.S. agents to get out. The agents refused and tried to identify themselves in Spanish as diplomats from the American embassy, but the hit squad members fired into the vehicle, striking both of them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.d9e1370918ef