Gunmen attack AA meeting in Mexico

Posted 38m ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Gunmen burst into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and opened fire in a violence-plagued Mexican border state, killing one person and wounding four, authorities said Tuesday.

Investigators had not determined a motive for the attack late Monday in Chihuahua City, the state capital of Chihuahua, the state prosecutor spokesman Eduardo Esparza said.

In September, gunmen killed 28 people at two drug rehabilitation centers in Ciudad Juarez, in the northern part of Chihuahua state across the border from El Paso. The city has seen some of the worst violence in Mexico's drug war, with more than 1,900 homicides this year.

Those killings prompted authorities to close at least 10 unregistered drug rehabilitation centers in Ciudad Juarez out of concern that the facilities were serving as a cover or recruiting grounds for drug trafficking gangs.

Officials attribute the violence to a dispute between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels. Esparza said Monday's shooting was the first such attack in Chihuahua City.

Elsewhere, in the Pacific coast state of Colima, state police captured a gang member who was one of America's 15 most wanted fugitives listed by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Aaron Lopez Garcia, 31, and three other inmates escaped from a city jail in Sunnyside, Washington, in November 2006, according to the website of the marshals service. His alleged accomplices were captured soon afterward, but Garcia remained on the loose.

Mexican police arrested him Monday near an ice cream factory in the seaside city of Manzanillo.

Garcia was flown to the U.S. on Monday, where he will face charges of escape and firearms violations.

U.S. charges were filed against Garza on Feb. 10, 2005, after authorities found a handgun on the floorboard of a vehicle in which he was a passenger. He went to trial and was found guilty.

The U.S. Marshals Service said Garcia is a member of the Nortenos gang with past convictions of firearm possession, robbery, domestic violence, drug possession, burglary and assault.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009 ... o-aa_N.htm