Tracks of destructive turf war scar Juárez
Leela Landress / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 06/01/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT


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Video - Graphic Content: See an eyewitness' account of Thursday's ambush.
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Editor's note: Multimedia reporter Leela Landress and photographer Adriane Jaeckle got first-hand looks at the violence unfolding on the streets of Juárez when they were sent on assignment there Thursday. Here is Landress' first-person account:


JUAREZ --Tensions mounted and horns blared as a line of cars crept forward, a few feet at a time, directly in front of bodies scattered on a tree-lined street near the Juárez central park.

A steady stream of 50 onlookers, their voices humming with excitement and curiosity, jostled to avoid spilling into the traffic jam.

The emergency phone calls had begun to filter into the Mexican attorney



general's office a little after 12:30 p.m., detailing a quadruple homicide and a critically injured child who was being rushed to the hospital.
Every echelon of law enforcement descended upon the modest neighborhood, and even tan military Hummers, fitted with machine guns and manned by grim-faced soldiers, rumbled into place at the perimeter of the crime scene.

As forensic specialists and police milled around, groups of giddy elementary- and junior-high school students competed for the

Bystanders watched the area where four men were shot dead and one woman was injured about 1 p.m. Thursday outside CarnicerÃ*a Hacienda in a residential area near the intersection of Boulevard Oscar Flores and Teofilo Borunda streets in Juárez. According to witnesses, two trucks with black-clad men pulled up and shot the victims before speeding away. (Adriane Jaeckle / El Paso Times)chance to get a closer look, wresting a pair of binoculars from their classmate's hands. Three young men perched on the shaded curb in front of a neighborhood convenience store hawked a car stereo, and two young women batted their eyelashes at the federal police monitoring the crowd.
Even adults living in the neighborhood crowded under the shade of the lila trees to discuss the grim events that left their remnants sprawled along the asphalt. As journalists, photographers and camera crews started to arrive, a man in a bright turquoise shirt moved toward the rear of the crowd, away from the cameras.

More serious than the rest, the man had witnessed the ambush that left four people dead.

"There was a lot of smoke when they were shooting. There were three or four men dressed all in black that got out of their Nissan Titan and black Ford trucks to shoot the victims again," he said.

Perhaps fearing for his own life, he glanced down at the video camera and hesitantly continued. "I think some were still alive because one of them was moving his head. The victims didn't ever return fire. I ran to take a look and didn't see any guns."

The man looked back at the slumped body face down in the street and said, "You know, I live here in Juárez. I'm not even startled any more."

Precious commodity

The day began with a daunting task. My editor wanted visual signs of the fallout from the turf battle raging right across from Downtown El Paso. All week, the newsroom, just like almost everywhere else in town, buzzed with gory details of the killings, which included reports of headless bodies wrapped in blankets and mutilated victims stuffed into barrels. So we headed over to Juárez to see what we could find.

The Mexican attorney general's office in Juárez, known as the PGR, is nestled among posh nightclubs, upscale restaurants and four-star hotels. The PGR investigates federal offenses and processes much of the drugs and guns seized in Mexico. After the customary introductions and formal requests, Angel Torres Valadez, the public information officer of the Juárez PGR, escorted us through a maze of white, neon-lit hallways to a massive steel door.

An agent with Mexico's Federal Investigations Agency (AFI), the equivalent of the FBI in the United States, has the only key to this storage room, and as the agent hauled the heavy steel door open and the overwhelming smell of marijuana enveloped us, we stepped inside.

About 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, the room is stuffed with hundreds of bags, packets, suitcases and bricks of marijuana; black tar heroin; cocaine; pills; and hallucinogens.

The parcels were stacked helter-skelter, one on top of the other almost to the ceiling. The four chain-link cages on one side of the room are not sufficient to hold the hundreds of packages, so the room is almost inaccessible because the entryway is also stacked almost 10 feet high with caramel-colored taped bundles. The smell permeates our clothes, and the federal agent jokes that U.S. customs might detain us for the intense smell wafting out of the car. We ask the street value of the drugs in the storage room and the agents speculate it to be in the millions of dollars.

War zone wreckage

The parking lot of the PGR building looks unassuming at first glance. But when you look closer, you notice a few anomalies. A new, midnight blue Cadillac Escalade sits in the corner of the lot. All of the tires are flat. A new Jaguar, with Jalisco, Mexico, license plates, is covered with dust and looks as though it hasn't been moved in months. A 2007 white Jeep Grand Cherokee with opaque bulletproof glass sits off to the right. The door handles are rigged with a device to shock anyone who attempts to open the door. The forensics specialist picking through a nearby SUV explains that the drug dealer who owned the car probably didn't want anyone to steal it, so he electrified the door handles.

I follow Torres Valadez, of the PGR, to an older model Jeep Cherokee. The 3-inch-thick bulletproof glass in the right rear window is shattered. Torres Valadez explains that the passenger door looks as though it was wrenched open with a crow bar. I sit in the leather seat and notice that blood smudges still mar the blond leather interior. Torres Valadez grabs two Mexico City license plates tossed behind the second row of seats. He explains that many of the drug dealers use sets of fake license plates that they change whenever they want to go unnoticed.

At Torres Valadez's recommendation, we head to the outskirts of the city to visit the final resting place for many of these brand-new, high-end vehicles. We drive 20 minutes southwest, out to the far side of the mountains that define Juárez's skyline. Looking out to the right, we notice huge hills made of trash. Thousands of white trash bags flutter in the evening breeze, and small homes perch on the sides of the crumbling, refuse-filled hills.

We were told to look for a colorful house to the left of the highway. Miraculously, we find it and are greeted by three pitbulls, a Rott-weiler and some type of shaggy brown mutt. A young woman cradling a baby ushers us inside the 20-foot-tall wrought iron gate. We wander out into the impound lot and down the hill covered with cars, trucks and vans seized by Mexico's attorney general.

We climb over car hoods and squeeze between bumpers looking for signs of violence, bullet holes and shattered glass. Most of the vehicles at the impound lot look as if they are just sitting in a parking lot ready to be driven away. In an older Ford F-150, a bullet hole cracked the windshield and shattered the rear window as it exited. There is no blood, but everything inside the truck has been covered with the silt that wafts across the desert. The blue of twilight is encroaching, and we decide it would be best to conclude a day spent following in the tracks of a violent drug war.

Leela Landress may be reached at llandress@elpasotimes.com; 546-6125.






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