Thread: TV Host Kidnapped and Killed in Mexico

TV host kidnapped and killed in Mexico:

Published March 25, 2011, EFE

Monterrey – A popular Mexican television personality and two companions were found fatally shot Friday hours after they were snatched off a street in this northern metropolis, authorities said.

Jose Luis Cerda, known as "La Gata," hosted programs produced by the Monterrey division of Televisa, Mexico's leading network.

His body was discovered Friday morning in the Monterrey suburb of Guadalupe. Scrawled on a nearby wall was a message from the killers warning other local television personalities against continuing to collaborate with a particular criminal organization, sources with the Nuevo Leon State Investigations Agency told Efe.

Municipal police and a Televisa news team rushed to the scene, but the network's reporter said during the live broadcast that he and his crew had to leave because the cops were withdrawing.

After the TV cameras were turned off, two men drove up, grabbed Cerda's body and fled as the police stood by.

Cerda was abducted Thursday night while walking to his car after taping the "El Club" program at the Televisa studios in Monterrey.

Assailants accosted the TV host and two companions, cousin Juan Roberto Gomez and cameraman Luis Ruiz Ruiz, and forced them into an SUV at gunpoint.

The bodies of Gomez and Ruiz appeared Friday on a main highway outside Monterrey, each killed with a single shot to the back of the head.

"La Gata," who acknowledged having overcome problems with substance abuse, was active in charitable and social causes.

Conflict among rival cartels and between criminals and the security forces have claimed some 35,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006, when newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon militarized the struggle against the drug trade.

Until last year, however, drug-war mayhem was comparatively rare in Greater Monterrey, home to more than 4 million people and the headquarters of many of Mexico's leading corporations.

The city and the surrounding state of Nuevo Leon are now a main battleground in a vicious turf batter between the Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels.

The cartels often target media outlets and individual journalists, and routinely resort to threats and bribery to influence press coverage of their activities.

Nine reporters were killed last year in Mexico and four went missing, while 64 journalists filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission, Mexico's equivalent of an ombudsman's office, over attacks and aggressions.

The commission says 66 journalists have been slain in Mexico since 2000 and the vast majority of those murders remain unsolved.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2 ... ed-mexico/

Has anyone heard what happened to the female American geologist who was kidnapped off the streets of (Juarez, I think) while visiting her mother last week?

she was released and returned safely to el paso.

This story here is disgusting

Originally Posted by jamesw62

she was released and returned safely to el paso.

This story here is disgusting

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A miracle she wasn't held for ransom and repeatedly raped.

All of these animalistic attacks are disgustingingly normal in Mexico. Mexico is about to abolish adultery from their law books. They already legalized marijuana and many illicit drugs, plus homosexuality.

Why is it that our Congress idolizes Calderon again?