Suspected hit man for Mexican cartel held in U.S.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

1:58 p.m. October 25, 2008

SAN ANTONIO – A suspected hit man for a Mexican drug cartel is being held by U.S. authorities near San Antonio and awaiting extradition to Mexico, where he has been charged in the deaths of two police officials.
Court records show that Gabriel Jalomo Rodriguez, 23, is charged with homicides in Mexico, but U.S. authorities don't have all the paperwork from the Mexican government, the San Antonio Express-News reported Saturday. Mexico's extradition efforts could take week.

Jalomo is accused of carrying out several killings for the Sinaloa cartel, and he was one of four people suspected in a shooting death in Laredo three years ago, when officials were concerned about violence in neighboring Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, spilling into the United States. A grand jury found insufficient evidence to indict him in the Laredo case.

Jalomo appeared in federal court in San Antonio this week in connection with the July 2005 shooting death of Ricardo Uvalle Escobedo, a police commander in Nuevo Laredo. He has also been charged in the shooting death of Tamaulipas state police agent Rabindranath Quimbar Arreola three months later.

After Quimbar's death, Mexican officials asked U.S. authorities for help in finding Jalomo. He was arrested five days after the shooting, but it wasn't clear why he wasn't sent to Mexico to face charges. A lawyer who defended Jalomo in a drug case said Laredo authorities might have held him for prosecution.

When the grand jury didn't indict Jalomo in the Laredo shooting, he pleaded guilty to separate drug charges and was sentenced to two years in prison.

Court records unsealed this week say Mexican officials only recently learned Jalomo was in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to a complaint seeking his detention, he has been charged in Tamaulipas state with homicides and related crimes in three cases.

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