Thread: U.S.: Rice to Mexico for talks on drugs, other issues

Four shot dead in Tijuana business

By Omar Millan Gonzalez
SPECIAL TO THE UNION-TRIBUNE
October 28, 2008

TIJUANA – A group of gunmen killed four men and wounded two others inside a business on the city's east side Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. State and local police said the attack occurred at 1 p.m. at an auto-parts business on Boulevard Diaz Ordaz in the Los Pinos neighborhood.

Authorities discounted robbery as a motive for the attack, noting the gunmen left the business after the shootings. The victims were not immediately identified.

About 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, Tijuana municipal police reported the discovery of the body of a man who had been shot to death in the Las Rosas neighborhood, also in eastern Tijuana.

On Monday, the Baja California Attorney General's Office reported the deaths of six people in the north and east sections of the city.

October has been the most violent month in the city's history. The official death toll tied to organized crime in that period is more than 150.

Officials have attributed the violence to a war among drug-cartel factions over the lucrative narcotics trade in the region and between traffickers and the government.

The situation has prompted thousands of parents in the region to keep their children home from school since last Thursday.
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Omar Millan Gonzalez contributes to the Union-Tribune's Spanish-language newspaper, Enlace.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexi ... jdead.html

Six killed, another wounded in TJ border crossing warehouse

UNION-TRIBUNE

3:53 p.m. November 3, 2008

TIJUANA – Six men were shot to death and a seventh was wounded Monday afternoon during a kidnapping at a produce warehouse near the Otay Mesa border crossing.
The identities of the victims were not released, but they were employees of the business, said Salvador Ortiz of the Baja California Attorney General's Office.

From today's U-T

More killings bring weekend's toll to 10

Municipal police said the attackers kidnapped a 28-year-old man. Police identified the man as the son of the business owner. The owner was among those who were killed, police said.

The business, called Ricardo Ulloa Z., is in a busy industrial neighborhood just west of the port of entry. A junior high school is about a block away.

Investigators said more than 100 spent casings from assault rifles were found inside the warehouse.
Tijuana has experienced an unprecedented number of killings in the past month as drug gangs battle each other and the government. Kidnappings also have set the city on edge.

Kidnappers kill Mexican child with acid injection

By Olga R. Rodriguez
ASSOCIATED PRESS

2:32 p.m. November 3, 2008

MEXICO CITY – Kidnappers grabbed a 5-year-old boy from a gritty Mexico City street market, then killed him by injecting acid into his heart – a new low even for Mexico's brutal kidnapping gangs.
The boy, Javier Morena, was the oldest son of a poor family that sold fruit at a market in the poor neighborhood of Iztapalapa, proof that the plague of kidnappings for ransom afflicts the working class as well as the wealthy.

Javier disappeared while playing at the market on Sunday, Oct. 26, Mexico City authorities said Monday. The boy's family spent days looking for him, finally persuading a local television station to post his picture on the news on Wednesday, Oct. 29.

A taxi driver recognized the boy, and went to the market to find the family. He told them that he had given the boy and a teenager a ride from the market to nearby Mexico state, and that the teenager had told him that the boy was crying because his younger brother had been stolen.

The driver dropped the two off a block from the police station, and the teen told him they were meeting the boy's mother there.

The family showed the driver a picture of their son, which happened to include the 17-year-old family friend and kidnapper. The driver then confirmed that the teen in the picture had taken the boy.

The police raided the 17-year-old's home, and he and his family and two others confessed to having killed the boy before they could ask for a 300,000-peso ($23,000) ransom, Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Mancera said in a statement.

Mancera said the assailants injected the boy with acid and buried him on a hill outside the capital.

Five suspected kidnappers, including the 17-year-old, are under arrest. It was unclear if the group had carried out other kidnappings.

Javier was buried early Monday. Hours later, sitting in her home of cinderblock and corrugated tin, the boy's mother, Laura Vega, said she has no idea why the kidnappers targeted her family. But she said she felt they should face the death penalty, long banned in Mexico, and that they should “suffer the way my son suffered.â€

11 officers killed near Mexico City

10 suspects have been arrested in the 3-day string of drug gang attacks

By GLORIA PEREZ Associated Press
Nov. 2, 2008, 11:10PM

Police in Mexico have arrested a man they describe as the leader of the violent Gulf drug cartel in the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen. Federal police said in a statement Saturday that Antonio Galarza was arrested in the northern city of Monterrey on suspicion of weapons violations and money laundering. Reynosa is a major shipping point for cocaine heading to the U.S. market, and is dominated by the violent hit squad known the Zetas. Also Saturday, unidentified people strung a series of drug cartel messages on banners along roadsides in the Pacific coast resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo. TOLUCA, MEXICO — Eleven policemen have been shot to death near Mexico City in a three-day string of drug-gang attacks, prosecutors said Sunday.

Mexico State prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz said 10 suspects believed linked to drug gangs have been arrested in the killings, which mainly occurred on highways and at police checkpoints in the state that loops around Mexico's capital. Some of the suspects were carrying rifles and grenades at the time of their arrest.

Bazbaz said that many of the suspects were from the neighboring state of Michoacan, a hotbed of drug violence dominated by a drug gang known as "The Family."

But he said evidence indicates that low-level traffickers and criminals, rather than organized cartel hit squads, were responsible for the attacks.

It was not clear if the killings were part of a coordinated plan.

Mexico State police commander German Garciamoreno said police patrols will be beefed up to confront the violence. The state, like many others across the country, has faced increased drug trafficking and threats against local authorities.

In Tijuana, on the northern border across from San Diego, Calif., police found two decapitated bodies wrapped in blankets in a vacant lot early Sunday.

The victims' heads were found nearby in a plastic bag. Cartel hit men in Mexico have increasingly been decapitating their rivals, apparently to spread fear and intimidation.

On Saturday, unidentified people strung a series of drug cartel messages on banners along roadsides in the Pacific coast resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo. The messages appeared to have been written by the Zetas and accused federal officials of protecting a rival cartel.