Police on alert for Zeta drug enforcer

Exclusive: Agents saw suspect in officer's killing at gang's base


12:01 AM CDT on Friday, March 30, 2007
By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
jtrahan@dallasnews.com

Dallas police have warned officers to be on the lookout for a high-level Mexican drug enforcer who they say may have ties to the methamphetamine dealer accused of killing a police officer last week.

Maximo Garcia Carrillo, 34, is considered one of Dallas' leading drug traffickers and an associate of the Mexican drug enforcers known as the Zetas. He is suspected of numerous murders in South Texas, and his last known address was a fortresslike home in north Oak Cliff.


Maximo Garcia Carrillo

Mr. Carrillo is wanted on a sealed indictment involving drug charges out of Laredo.

The home where he was thought to be living was under observation by federal agents when Wesley Lynn Ruiz, 27, was seen there.

Nine days later, police say, Mr. Ruiz shot and killed Senior Cpl. Mark Nix after a short chase and a gunbattle.

Two days before Cpl. Nix was shot, Dallas police issued a bulletin obtained by The Dallas Morning News that warns officers to use extreme caution if they encounter Mr. Carrillo, who is "considered armed and dangerous."


Wesley Lynn Ruiz

"This guy is a major player," said Deputy Chief Julian Bernal, commander of the Dallas police narcotics division. He said that Mr. Carrillo is aware that police know of the Oak Cliff house and it's doubtful he uses it any longer. His whereabouts are unknown.

Travels with bodyguards
The house, in the 1600 block of Brandon Street, appears to have been modified to include a giant turret, or semicircular wall jutting out beyond the front door. At the top are small rectangular cutouts that could be used for observing goings-on in front of the house – or worse.

Mr. Carrillo travels with several bodyguards armed with automatic weapons and possibly rocket propelled grenades, police said. Federal marshals say the bodyguards have highly specialized training and are considered ground-air assault Mexican commandos.

Mr. Carrillo also has strong ties with the Mexican Mafia prison gang and "Zeta cells in the Dallas area," the bulletin says.

Mr. Carrillo is thought to be a second-generation Zeta, or Zetita. The original Zetas were former special forces soldiers, trained in the U.S., who deserted the Mexican army and began working for the Gulf cartel. That cartel is a major supplier of drugs, namely cocaine, to and through Dallas, and Mr. Carrillo is considered their top and most dangerous enforcer in the area.

The Zetas are thought to have carried out drug hits in Texas, including a 2004 assassination attempt on a rival drug dealer on Mimi Court in west Oak Cliff that left one man dead and two others injured. But authorities have said that the group tends to lie low in the U.S. to keep from drawing too much attention from law enforcement.

The Houston Drug Enforcement Administration's most-wanted Web site says Mr. Carrillo goes by several nicknames, including Tommy, Bebo and 007. He is also known by his Zetita code name L-32, or Laredo-32, authorities say.

Mr. Carrillo is believed to be one of a handful of trusted Zeta members whose job is to enforce "toll collection procedures" along Interstate 35. He's also an enforcer in Dallas, a key city for the Gulf cartel because of the region's many airports and demand for drugs – whether meth, cocaine, heroin or marijuana.

"He has his hands full in Dallas, and I suspect he spends a lot of time there," said a U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

"When he's in Dallas or San Antonio or some other city in the area, it's usually because he's either coordinating a shipment or enforcing Gulf cartel policy, which is pay, or die. He forces people to pay money owed to the cartel."

Chief Bernal said that until federal marshals informed him that Mr. Carrillo was linked to the Oak Cliff house, his narcotics unit had not tied it to any drug activity.

Federal agents in South Texas tipped off Dallas-area agents to Mr. Carrillo's presence here in late 2006, leading them to eventually place the house on Brandon Street under surveillance.

County records show that the house is owned by a property management group based in Laredo. When contacted Thursday, the firm said that although the house was still in its name, it had been sold in 1998. The firm was holding on to the deed until the buyer paid off the house. A secretary said Mr. Carrillo was not the buyer.

No one appeared to be home Thursday. A dark-colored car with no license plate was parked in the driveway, encircled by a metal fence. Some of the house's windows appeared to have been boarded up; others were painted with a large X.

Neighbors said they are suspicious of the house because of the modifications that have been made and the constant flow of people at all hours there.

Stop ends tragically
While members of a local U.S. Marshals Service task force were watching the house on March 14 looking for Mr. Carrillo, Mr. Ruiz left there and was subsequently stopped in the 2400 block of Catherine Street. Realizing he was not the target of their surveillance, police had planned to let him go, but he sped away – after he had given officers his driver's license.

Officers pursued him, but he lost them after running several stop signs, according to a police report. They found the Lincoln LS he was driving abandoned in an alley in the 2700 block of Gladstone. The seats had been pulled down, and witnesses told police they saw him carrying something away.

Later, authorities raided his house on nearby West Brooklyn Avenue. Mr. Ruiz was not there, but they found marijuana, bullets, ammunition magazines and scales.

Nine days later, on March 23, officers tried to pull Mr. Ruiz over again, this time because the car he was driving, a Chevrolet Caprice, matched the description of a car spotted fleeing a murder two days earlier. He led officers on a chase and subsequently shot Cpl. Nix in West Dallas, police say.

Local and federal authorities know of no other ties between Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Carrillo other than the encounter with him leaving the Brandon Street home on March 14.

Law enforcement officials say Mr. Carrillo has a long police rap sheet in Laredo, across the border in Nuevo Laredo and throughout the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon.

"He's one of the best enforcers the cartel has," said the federal law enforcement official who asked not to be named. "He's quite handy with a gun."

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