Weapons dealer sent to prison

January 30, 2012 10:43 PM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOUSTON — A federal judge in Houston has sentenced a Texas man to more than eight years in prison for organizing illegal gun purchases.

Among the purchases was one that put an assault rifle in the hands of the Zetas drug cartel that was used in a deadly attack on two U.S. agents in Mexico.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes sentenced 30-year-old Manuel Gomez Barba to 100 months in prison Monday, to begin upon completion of a previous nine-year drug sentence.

The indictment alleged Barba paid others to buy 44 guns knowing they’d be exported to the Zetas in Mexico. The U.S. attorney’s office says ballistics testing linked to a February 2011 shooting on a Mexican highway that killed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime J. Zapata and wounded colleague Victor Avila.

Zapata, 32, a native of Brownsville, was killed in Mexico in an attack by members of the Zetas while traveling along Highway 57 in the San Luis Potosí state, according to U.S. officials.

Mexican authorities report they were told the attack on Zapata and Avila was a case of mistaken identity.

Zapata attended Egly Elementary from 1983 to 1990 and Oliveira Middle School from 1990 to 1992, school officials said. He went onto to attend Homer Hanna High School where he graduated in 1995.

Zapata later attended the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College where he graduated in 2005 with an associate’s degree in Applied Science and a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice.

He joined the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2006. He previously worked for the U.S. Border Patrol and had been stationed in Yuma, Ariz., before getting his job with ICE.

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