Thread: US man on jet ski shot in Mexican waters

it's really hard for me to feel sorry for this couple .. i mean it's not like there aren't warnings about not going to mexico ...

This couple should have exercised better judgment...no doubt. However, if the situation was reversed and it was a mexican couple jet skiing on the American side of the lake and suffered the same fate, it would be world war III. Mexico would be fanatical, demanding answers. While in this case, the authorities on both sides are basically saying, “Sorry there’s nothing we can do. Stay out of mexico.â€

Originally Posted by marquis

it's really hard for me to feel sorry for this couple .. i mean it's not like there aren't warnings about not going to mexico ...

How true, how true.

I DO feel sorry for them. They were out for a day of fun and were shot at for no reason - and now we are not sure if they were in mexican waters or not.

This is what happens when the borders between a 1st world country and a 3rd world corrupt, cesspool, narco, failed state, POS country, are blurred.

rewhblcain wrote
[quote:1zg8tglx]marquis wrote:
it's really hard for me to feel sorry for this couple .. i mean it's not like there aren't warnings about not going to mexico ...

How true, how true.[/quote:1zg8tglx]



The Mexicans have been running this lake into US waters delivering drugs and illegals for a long time every time they can get past the border Patrol bots. Before this happened none have been chased and shot in the head with automatic and semiautomatic guns, as it smacks of barbarism.

Why wasn't this story reported on EVERY MAJOR MSM network?

Why do these invasion attacks continue to be swept under the rug?

Colorado man apparently killed by Mexican pirates
By Kirk Mitchell
The Denver Post
Posted: 10/02/2010 01:00:00 AM MDTUpdated: 10/02/2010 09:08:11 AM MDT


Tiffany and David Hartley were days from moving back to Colorado when they took their ill-fated tour. Related Articles
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Colorado native missing after ambush on Falcon Lake in Mexico

A Colorado man now living in Texas may have been killed by Mexican pirates who authorities said have tried to lay claim to a popular lake on the Texas border.

Berthoud native Tiffany Hartley said she and her husband, David, were on a sightseeing, personal-watercraft excursion Thursday on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir, straddling the border, when pirates in three speedboats began chasing them.

"We saw that they had guns, so we started racing away from them," Tiffany Hartley, 29, said in a phone interview from her home in McAllen, Texas.

As the couple fled about 2:30 p.m., the pirates opened fire with rifles, seeming to target her husband, she said. A bullet struck him in the back of the head and he splashed into the water.

Hartley described her efforts to rescue her husband, then the agony of having to leave him behind, and finally a harrowing race back to the U.S. side as the pirates trained their guns on her. She doubled back and tried to put her husband back on his craft. But, she said, her husband seemed limp and she saw a gunshot wound on his head.

"I tried pulling him up, but I couldn't," Hartley said in a shaky voice.

David Hartley is believed to have died. But when Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez learned of the shooting, there was little that he or other American law enforcement officers could do to investigate or retrieve the body unless it drifted 2 miles over to the U.S. side of the lake. They had to rely on Mexican authorities, who told him they couldn't respond because they discovered their boat's motor was missing.

Early doubts

At first, Gonzalez acknowledged, the story sounded so fantastic that he had his doubts about Tiffany Hartley's truthfulness. Had she staged the whole scenario to murder her husband?

But an independent witness came forward and described seeing a motorboat chase a woman into U.S. waters. When she made it to the shore, she ran up to a stranger's house, her body trembling in fear.

"She was terrified. At this time, I can safely say she had nothing to do with her husband's death," Gonzalez said.

The Hartleys originally met in high school in Loveland. They had been married for eight years. About three years ago, they moved to Reynosa, N.M., also near the Mexican border, and five months ago to Texas, where David, 30, worked for a company that repaired fractured wells.

They were about a week away from moving back to Colorado after work slowed down in Texas, Tiffany Hartley said.

Before he left the state, David Hartley, a history buff, wanted to visit a Catholic church in Old Guerrero, a town that was submerged after a dam was built, his wife said. It was a 7-mile trip across the lake and into Mexico.

Warnings issued

The trip was ill-advised, Gonzalez said, because of a recent spate of robberies by Zetitas, younger members of a regional drug cartel. In April and May, the pirates robbed tourists on the lake, which is the site of nationally televised largemouth bass fishing contests. Falcon Reservoir, created by a dam on the Rio Grande, at times is filled with hundreds of fishing boats.

Gonzalez had been regularly appearing on national news programs in recent months warning people not to cross over to the Mexican side of the lake.

After visiting the church, which was submerged halfway up its front doors, the Hartleys began the return to the U.S. When her husband was shot, Hartley spun her watercraft around and returned to him as boats continued to speed toward her, she said.

The 105-pound woman immediately dived into the water and pulled her 250-pound husband to the side of her craft. There was a bullet hole in his head.

Just then, she said, one of the boats caught up to her with several men aboard and maneuvered to within 5 feet on the other side of her.

"They were talking to each other," she said.

Gonzalez said he thinks they were discussing what to do with her. The boat went back to the other boats, apparently so those aboard could consult with the others.

At that point, she said, she knew that in order to survive she had to abandon her husband. She quickly climbed aboard her craft and sped away.

She heard more gunshots. Bullets were whizzing by her head and striking the water on either side of her and in front of her.

Survival "a miracle"

"It's a miracle I'm even here," she said, crying on the phone.

A bass fisherman told investigators that one boat followed her well into U.S. territory, Gonzalez said.

"These guys don't care," he said.

FBI agents, Texas Rangers, state fish and wildlife officers, and sheriff's deputies searched for Hartley's body, but they are not lawfully allowed to venture into Mexican waters.

Gonzalez sought help from Mexican military officers at a nearby port authority, and they mobilized and headed to the area to launch a search. But they found that the motor had been removed from their boat.

"They are outgunned," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said Tiffany Hartley was sobbing when he met her Thursday afternoon. She repeatedly asked whether her husband's body had been found.

Gonzalez said the Hartleys should have known how dangerous it is on the border, where body parts are often strewn on the streets.

"When I asked if she knew how dangerous it was to go to Mexico, she quickly changed the subject," he said. "I didn't pursue it. I didn't want her to feel guilty."

Post librarian Vickie Makings contributed to this report. Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
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Search resumes for US man shot in Mexican waters
By PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press Writer
Posted: 10/01/2010 07:41:48 AM MDTUpdated: 10/01/2010 03:24:34 PM MDT

Colorado native missing after ambush on Falcon Lake in Mexico


SAN ANTONIO—Texas officials on Friday renewed warnings about pirates marauding on a U.S.-Mexico border lake after a Colorado tourist was gunned down in Mexican waters while his wife dodged bullets and raced her Jet Ski back to American soil.

Search teams combed the U.S. side of Falcon Lake for David Michael Hartley, 30, whose wife told police he was shot in the back of the head Thursday after being ambushed by gunmen on boats.

The gunmen are suspected pirates who have turned Falcon Lake, a waterskiing and bass fishing hotspot down the border from Laredo, into uneasy waters for fishermen and boaters. There have been at least five reported run-ins with pirates on the lake this year, though prior holdups had never been deadly.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said Friday that Hartley was believed to be killed, but nearly 24 hours after the shooting, there still was no word whether the oil industry worker had been found. U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Narcizo Ramos said he didn't know whether Mexican authorities were searching their side.

The shooting led Texas public safety officials to again urge boaters to stay on the U.S. side of the 60-mile lake, five months after issuing its initial advisory following three pirate attacks.

But state Rep. Aaron Pena, a south Texas lawmaker briefed on the pirates earlier this year, said it has become dangerous enough to stay off the lake altogether.

"I wouldn't do it," Pena said. "When I go out there I have all the protection Texas can provide. But the average fisherman doesn't have that."

Pena said he has no doubts the pirates are working with Mexico's drug gangsters. The cartels that control the area wouldn't let the pirates operate otherwise, he said.

While Hartley's fate remained unclear, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said 29-year-old Tiffany Hartley fears her husband is dead. She circled back on her Jet Ski to rescue him but had to retreat when she heard bullets whizzing by.

Some campers along Falcon Lake had taken to arming themselves following the state's first warning in May. In one incident that month, state officials said five armed men boarded a boat on the U.S. side of the boundary.

The pirates either use powerful AK-47s or AR-15s to threaten their victims, Texas public safety officials said. The agency believes the pirates use local Mexican fishermen to operate the boats to get close to American fishermen.

Falcon Lake is a dammed section of the Rio Grande that straddles the border. The border is marked by 14 partially submerged concrete towers that mark the Rio Grande's path before the lake was created in 1954.

According to Gonzalez, Tiffany Hartley told police the couple rode their Jet Skis for sightseeing and to take pictures of a famous church in Old Guerrero. They were riding back when they saw the armed gunmen on the boats, and immediately began racing back to U.S. waters.

Tiffany Hartley told authorities her husband was shot in the back in the head; Cox said one of the boats may have crossed into U.S. waters briefly while trying to run her down.

Cox said Tiffany Hartley estimated the shooting took place about five to six miles from the Texas shoreline where she parked and called for help.

In April, pirates robbed another group of boaters who also went to Old Guerrero to see the church. Cox said the most recent reported pirate sighting had been Aug. 31, when boaters saw gunmen riding a small skiff with "Game Wardin" misspelled in duct tape on the side of the vessel.

Cox said it appeared the pirates were trying to imitate state game warden boats they have seen patrolling the lake.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the shooting underscores the need for the federal government to further secure the border.

"It's really become substantially worse in the last 18 months with the drug cartels having almost free rein," Perry said Friday in Austin. "This is about our citizens', on both sides of the borders, safety."

Violence on the Mexican side of the lake has been climbing for several months, as a fractured partnership between the region's dominant Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, plunged many of the area's Mexican border cities into violence.



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Gonzalez sought help from Mexican military officers at a nearby port authority, and they mobilized and headed to the area to launch a search. But they found that the motor had been removed from their boat.

"They are outgunned," Gonzalez said.

The narco-terrorists are in charge of mexico, as this incident once again demonstrates. Yet, this current corrupted and ethno-centric administration refuses to secure the border and do whatever necessary to keep America safe, as political grandstanding and pandering to mexico still remains a top priority.