Thread: Cop, 10 relatives killed in attacks in Mexico

Mexico Under Seige

Police officer, 10 relatives killed in attacks in Tabasco

Gunmen hit the homes of Carlos Reyes Lopez and extended family; a 2-year-old nephew and five other children are among the dead. Reyes Lopez was a member of an elite agency tackling police corruption.

By Tracy Wilkinson
4:34 PM PST, February 15, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City -- A team of gunmen in southeastern Mexico opened fire on the homes of a state police officer and his extended family, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children, authorities said Sunday.

The shootings Saturday night in the state of Tabasco stunned an oil-rich part of Mexico that has not experienced the same level of drug-related warfare common elsewhere in the country, despite its position of strategic importance to traffickers.

Full coverage of Mexico's drug war
The killing of police officer Carlos Reyes Lopez and his family came days after police in Tabasco captured four gunmen and left one suspect dead. Although some speculate that the motive was retaliation, the state prosecutor's office also suggested that a personal dispute involving the Reyes Lopez family might have been behind the attack.

Along with Reyes Lopez, 10 members of his family, including a 2-year-old nephew were killed in the Saturday night assault. The 12th victim was a fruit vendor who had stopped at the Reyes Lopez home to deliver frozen strawberries. No arrests were reported.

"They killed my brother Carlos, his whole family, my son, my mother . . . they killed everyone," sobbed a survivor identified as a sister of the dead officer and mother of the 2-year-old, according to an account in Tabasco Hoy newspaper.

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DISCUSSIONThe newspaper report said Reyes Lopez was a member of an elite police agency formed last year amid efforts to rid public security forces of rampant corruption. Members of the new force had to pass rigorous exams, drug testing and additional vetting procedures.

In other violence, gunmen using grenades and assault rifles attacked, for the fourth time in two days, a police station in the state of Michoacan. A police officer was wounded in Saturday night's incident, adding to two other officers and eight civilians who have been wounded in the string of attacks.

Michoacan is the home state of President Felipe Calderon and a drug mafia called La Familia has been making inroads in parts of the state.

In Mexico City, authorities discovered the decapitated bodies of two women in the trunk of a parked car. The heads were in a cooler in the car's back seat, Mexican newspapers reported Sunday. Seven people were reported killed in a shootout at a restaurant in Jalisco and five at a wake in Durango.

Also on Sunday, colleagues reported the killing of a photographer for a newspaper in the town of Iguala, in Guerrero state. And the Mexican navy announced the discovery and confiscation of seven tons of cocaine on a ship off the Pacific coast, one of the largest finds since Calderon's government took office in December 2006.

wilkinson@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 2749.story

Gunmen kill 12 in Mexico, including 5 children

The Associated Press
10:50 a.m. February 15, 2009

TABASCO, Mexico — Gunmen have killed a state police officer and 10 members of his family, including five children, authorities said Sunday.

The shooting late Saturday also killed a street vendor in front of the house of state police officer Carlos Reyes, said Tabasco deputy prosecutor Alex Alvarez. Among the five children killed was a 2-year-old boy.

"It is confirmed that (the assailants) wanted to kill the state police officer but they killed his whole family," Alvarez said.
Alvarez said three other people were wounded the attack in the town of Monte Largo, near Mexico's border with Guatemala.

Police hadn't determined a motive for the attack but Alvarez said Reyes directed a car chase and raids on two homes on Wednesday that led to the death of three suspected gang members and the arrest of seven others.

In Mexico City, authorities on Saturday found the decomposing bodies of two women in the trunk of a car that had been abandoned for at least a week, the Reforma newspaper reported.

A city investigator told the newspaper that the women had been decapitated and the heads left inside a cooler in the back seat of the car.
He said one of the women had been arrested in 1999 for the kidnapping of nine relatives of an alleged drug dealer.
More than 6,000 people died last year in a wave of drug-related violence.

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