Thread: Ciudad Juárez Paramedics Threatened if They Take Gunshot Vi

Ciudad Juárez Paramedics Threatened if They Take Gunshot Victims to U.S. Hospitals

Published February 24, 2011

Private paramedics in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico's murder capital, are being threatened with death by drug traffickers, who have prohibited them from taking people with gunshot wounds to neighboring El Paso, Texas, hospital officials told Efe.

An average of five people a day sustain gunshot wounds in the border city and the majority of them ask to be taken to El Paso, which is just across the Rio Grande, for security reasons.

Gunmen have sometimes chased ambulances or entered hospitals in Juárez to finish off people who survived shootings.

The paramedics, many of whom are volunteers, began receiving death threats last year via the Life 1 radio frequency used by first responders and the threatening messages have been "constant" since then, emergency services coordinator Juan Arras told Efe.

"They do it blatantly. They say they are with La Linea or from El Chapo's cartel and tell us that if we take anybody out of the city that we picked up who had been in an armed attack, they are going to break us," Arras said.

La Linea is a gang allied with the Juárez drug cartel, while Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman is the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

The Sinaloa and Juárez cartels have employed members of local street gangs in their war for control of the border city.

Paramedics have changed their procedures for moving people wounded in attacks, transporting victims with the utmost secrecy.

The captain of another unit told Efe on condition of anonymity that his paramedics no longer headed immediately to the international bridges, avoided using their sirens and took lesser-known routes.

Hospitals in Ciudad Juárez have made the news following attacks on patients in emergency rooms, with gunmen finishing off people they failed to kill on the first try.
The gunmen threaten to kill anyone who tries to stop them.

Several gunmen finished off three wounded men who had been taken to the emergency room of the Zone 6 General Hospital on Oct. 11.

A councilwoman from a city south of Ciudad Juárez was murdered by several gunmen on July 30, 2009, at a hospital, while a man was killed on the same day in the emergency room of the border city's Clinic 35.

Gunmen pulled a wounded man out of a Red Cross ambulance in February 2009 and finished him off with large-caliber weapons.

Calls for Red Cross ambulance service in Juarez soared from 7,000 in 2007 to 14,000 in 2010, the organization said.

University Medical Center, a public hospital in El Paso, said at least 191 people wounded in shootings in Ciudad Juárez have been treated since 2008, costing the non-profit institution $3 million.

The Texas hospital teated 58 patients in 2008 and 83 others in 2009, with the figure falling to around 50 last year due to the threats against Mexican paramedics.

Paramedics must also deal with authorities on the Mexican side of the border who often prevent them from going to a crime scene until army troops have secured it.

"People think that we don't want to get near or we take too long, but what really happens is that there is a military and police order that we can't get close, and we have to go around in circles until they give us permission," Arras said.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifest ... z1EvOxxRvF

Take them to the mexican hospital, we don't want them here. If mexico can't or won't take care of their own citizens, then they need to allow them to carry arms to defend themselves. They are NOT our problem or responsibility.