Accused teen hitman's family hard hit by drugs, crime

By Morgan Lee, Tanya Sierra and Janine Zúñiga
Saturday, December 11, 2010 at 3:32 p.m.

A teenager captured international headlines this month after admitting that he beheaded people for a Mexican drug cartel while under the influence of narcotics. Fourteen years ago, that same boy began his life in San Diego with cocaine in his system.

Edgar Jimenez Lugo’s arrest and confession show what can happen when children — especially orphans or those from unstable families — become involved in the drug underworld. It’s a problem authorities on both sides of the border are fighting.

More than 32,000 people have died in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón launched an unprecedented war on that nation’s drug traffickers and organized crime in 2006.

Still, many Mexicans were stunned by the specter of child recruits being used as hitmen for cartels, said Ursula Oswald, an analyst of social vulnerabilities at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cuernavaca.

“Everybody suspected but wasn’t sure this existed, until you have this case,â€