Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [120]
On Saturday, Luis Alonso Marrufo Armendariz, a 38-year-old officer with the Chihuahua State Investigative Agency, was shot in his police vehicle by people in a gray sports car on Manuel Cloutier Avenue. He died and another police officer traveling with him was wounded.
The body of Raymundo Martinez Alcantara, in his 30s, was found in a pickup truck Saturday on Tecnologico Avenue and Nayarit Street. He had been shot to death. José de la Luz Arreola Garcia, 42, was pronounced dead from stab wounds Saturday at Santa Maria clinic.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
Three men were killed in a hail of AK-47 gunfire in the parking lot of a mall in San Lorenzo. At the close of this edition, none of the dead had been identified. More than 100 shots were fired from a Windstar, Tacoma and Chevrolet Silverado that closed in on the Nissan Altima and fired at the occupants. The vehicles of the aggressors fled and could not be located despite police roadblocks. Minutes later, the Paseo Triunfo de la Republica, a main thoroughfare in the city, was completely closed causing traffic chaos.
ArrobaJuárez.com, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
Two of the three transit cops abducted Monday in San Lorenzo were found, injured and unable to speak. Identified unofficially only by their last names, Molina and Uribe were found abandoned near a house whose residents called an ambulance. The director of the Transit Police said, “We’ve found two of our men, but Lieutenant Z5 is still missing.”
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
Yesterday, two women accused the Mexican army of being responsible for the disappearance of their husbands. “I was talking on the phone [early last Saturday morning] with my husband when he said ‘here come the soldiers’ and he dropped the phone but it was still connected and I heard him scream and I heard them hit him and since then I haven’t heard anything from him,” said Julia Escobar. She and Maridani Lopez are from Novolato, Sinaloa, and they traveled to the border to look for their husbands, who remain missing. They first went to the military headquarters where no one met with them and afterward to the offices of the Federal Attorney General.
Unofficial sources report that the detained were sent directly to Mexico City as the case is being handled by the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime Investigations, whose offices are in the capital.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
The Mexican army yesterday presented 4 individuals in their custody to the media, among them an ex-state policeman from Sinaloa. The detained include Jorge Ibarra García, 32, from Novolato, Sinaloa, who professed to having executed 20 persons in a two-year period and to belong to a criminal organization known as La Linea. They also presented José Ángel Pérez Ibarra, 25, from Culiacán, Sinaloa, who, according to the army, is an organized crime hit man who confessed to killing 21 persons since 2006.
New York Times, March 5, 2008
MEXICO: BACKYARD BODY COUNT AT 14
The federal attorney general’s office said agents had uncovered 14 bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juárez, a city that has gained infamy for its gangland slayings and the unsolved murders of hundreds of women. The agents began digging at the house in the neighborhood of La Cuesta, across the border from El Paso, last month, after a drug raid. They first found the dismembered bodies of nine victims, some of whom died more than five years ago. Five more bodies were unearthed in the last week. Prosecutors have yet to determine why the victims were killed, but they noted that agents found 3,700 pounds of marijuana in the initial raid.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 5, 2008
PUERTO PALOMAS DE VILLA—Two people