Police: Drug cartel linked to El Paso killing
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 06/03/2009 03:04:11 PM MDT

EL PASO -- A man shot and killed outside his East Side home was a mid-level member of the Juárez drug cartel, El Paso police said Wednesday afternoon.

The unsolved homicide is the first confirmed drug cartel-related killing in El Paso since a war among drug cartels erupted in Juárez in January 2008.

El Paso police detectives are looking into a possible drug link in the death of Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana, 37, who was killed the night of May 15 when while walking up to his home in the 1300 block of Pony Trail Drive, a police spokesman said.

Police had said Gonzalez may have been approached by another man and shot with a handgun. Neighbors in the area reported hearing at least three gunshots shortly after 10 p.m.

The shooter may have had an accomplice, police said.

Gonzalez was shot eight times with the lethal wound to the chest along with wounds to his left thigh and several grazing wounds, the El Paso County chief medical examiner.

He was dead on arrival at Thomason Hospital.
Police said Gonzalez was a Mexican citizen.

Gonzalez Galeana worked as a truck driver, according to Web site www.truckdrivingcdljobs.com.

More than 2,200 people have been killed in the Juárez area since 2008 due in part to a crime wave unleashed by a war between the Juárez drug cartel and the Sinaloa cartel reputedly run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 832-4400 or Crime Stoppers at 566-8477.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_12511583