Thread: U.S. could take in teen cartel killer

U.S. could take in teen cartel killer

The San Diego-born boy who killed 4 men wants to return to the U.S.

By Morgan Lee8:15 p.m.July 17, 2013

Edgar Jimenez Lugo, shortly after his arrest in Mexico in December. — Marco Antionio Diaz Sierra
A San Diego-born teenager convicted of beheading four young men on behalf of a drug cartel in central Mexico could be back in the United States by the end of the year or sooner.

Edgar Jimenez Lugo, who was 14 when the killings occurred, has asked to be transferred to the United States, according to juvenile court authorities in Mexico and a relative there. He is serving a three-year sentence at a juvenile detention center in Morelos state, just south of Mexico City, and is due to get out in December.

The president of the Morelos juvenile court system, which oversees Edgar’s rehabilitation, said the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City is evaluating the teen’s transfer request.

“The corresponding studies are being done by the embassy and they have until July 31 to decide on his transfer,” Ana Virinia Pérez told reporters in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on Friday. “It is assumed that the embassy is following through with all the requirements.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy declined Wednesday to comment on the case after consulting with the State Department. Several U.S. law enforcement agencies also declined to comment on Edgar’s transfer request.
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It is unclear whether the request was initiated by the teenager or U.S. authorities, who have regularly visited Edgar at the detention center that currently holds 134 juveniles.

Judges and case workers from the Morelos juvenile courts are on summer recess until August and unavailable to comment.

Edgar, who turned 17 in May, has not been accused of crimes against Americans or U.S. institutions. Criminal justice experts, however, have said U.S. prosecutors could try to pursue conspiracy charges against the teen based on possible links to cross-border drug smuggling networks.

But former federal prosecutor John Kirby said an extradition-style transfer on drug conspiracy charges is unlikely given Edgar’s age and situation.

“It’s probably for humanitarian reasons — just to get him in a better spot up here rather than to prosecute him,” said Kirby, who previously coordinated international issues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego.

A U.S. Embassy official contacted Edgar’s family to see if they would consent to the transfer, said a relative of the teen, who asked not to be named out of safety concerns.

The relative received a description of a supervised environment where Edgar would be able to continue school studies and begin working.


The killings Edgar committed occurred in August 2010. The bodies of his victims — a student, a cook at a university, a gas station attendant and a small-business owner — were mutilated and strung from a bridge in Cuernavaca, a tourist destination just south of Mexico City.

Mexican military authorities soon began searching for the teen after graphic online videos emerged that talked of a boy assassin named “El Ponchis,”

Soldiers arrested him in December 2010 at an airport near Cuernavaca as he and an older sister waited for a flight to Tijuana. They were planning to reunite with their mother, Yolanda Lugo Jimenez, in San Diego. She was arrested days later in Barrio Logan on immigration violations.

Then in July 2011, Edgar was convicted following a juvenile court trial of homicide and organized crime charges and sentenced to three years in custody. Meanwhile, his mother served a federal prison sentence in California for violating a previous deportation order. She was deported from the U.S. in April.

Edgar’s case confirmed fears that Mexican children had become not only victims but also perpetrators of violence orchestrated by feuding drug gangs, as they scrambled to survive a government offensive against them under former President Vicente Calderón.

The teen was born in 1996 to drug addicted parents who had illegally immigrated to San Diego. The parents lost custody of Edgar — and eventually his five siblings — when he had cocaine in his system at birth.

Edgar’s parental grandmother adopted him and his siblings, taking them to live in Tejalpa, a working-class village on the outskirts of Cuernavaca, in August 1997.

After the grandmother’s death in 2004, Edgar dropped out of elementary school and got by with limited family supervision.

Edgar’s father, David Antonio Jimenez Solis, lives in Tejalpa, where Edgar spent most of his childhood. The father was ordered out of the United States more than a decade ago after an arrest on drug charges.

Under Mexican laws that aim to rehabilitate young offenders, Edgar’s three-year sentence is the maximum allowed based on his age of 14 at the time of the crimes.

Two of Edgar’s sisters who were arrested with him remain in jail on alleged links to organized crime. A cousin arrested when authorities were searching for Edgar also remains incarcerated.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jul/17/edgar-jimenez-lugo-cartel-killer-mexico/

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