Posted on 01/18/2008 8:35:42 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Violence spikes in Mexico
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 18, 7:01 PM ET
Rosalba Padilla thought the first shots were nothing but construction in her quiet, upper-class Tijuana neighborhood. It wasn't until she looked out her window and saw a sea of police that she realized the noise was gunfire.
Down the street, at the Preschool of Happiness, director Gloria Rico activated the school's alarm, prompting police to rush into the building, their guns drawn. Rico said the children were terrified by the chaos.
"Some were crying, one vomited and another wet his pants," she said Friday, adding that the police quickly put away their weapons and started evacuating the children.
The fighting erupted as federal agents raided a house near the U.S. border Thursday that authorities say sheltered gunmen linked to drug traffickers. Soldiers and police joined skirmishing that became a chaotic three-hour battle. A federal agent and a gunman died and four officers were wounded in the latest outbreak of violence across the border from San Diego. Inside the house, authorities later found six slain kidnap victims.
The gunbattle and killings shocked even crime-weary Mexico. Many argued President Felipe Calderon should step up a yearlong crackdown on drug traffickers and other organized criminals that has sent soldiers into cities across the nation.
"What they need here is a heavy hand," Padilla said Friday while surveying blood-soaked streets and a bullet-ridden police truck. "The authorities need to be strong, very tough."
Padilla spent the shootout hiding in the closet with her 19-year-old daughter. As they crouched in the dark, they started to think they wouldn't escape alive. Gunmen across the street shouted that they would drop bombs unless police backed off.
"The gunfire was terrible," she said. "It made the walls shake. I really didn't think we were going to get out."
A day earlier less than two block down the street, police rushed children from a school vulnerable to gunfire from men holed up on the roof and top floors of the besieged safehouse.
Some of the children were carried by officers who crouched and pressed themselves up against the building to avoid the bullets. Other children ran out onto the sidewalk in groups under armed guard, their eyes wide with terror.
"I could hear the hail of gunfire, and it was really strong," Rico said. "I didn't feel fear until we had evacuated all 65 kids that were under my care, and then my legs started to shake."
Residents said soldiers, sent in to help overwhelmed police, swarmed rooftops. The gunmen refused to back down, shouting obscenities at the police and taunting them.
Four men were eventually arrested, including a state police investigator and another Tijuana police officer. They were taken to Mexico City, where they were being questioned by federal prosecutors. Another gunman was killed.
Once authorities entered the home, they found the bodies of the six men who were being held hostage. All had been shot in the head, although it was unclear if they were killed before or during the clash. Police were trying to determine if the victims were being held for ransom or were rival gang members.
Federal prosecutors said the gunmen belonged to Tijuana's Arellano-Felix drug cartel, a gang that has been weakened in recent years by the loss of leaders who have been arrested or killed.
Thursday's violence was only the latest in a rash of recent killings.
On Jan. 10, gunmen shot and killed two federal agents and a civilian in the central state of Michoacan.
Two days earlier, two other federal agents were killed and three were injured during a shootout in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
A day before the Reynosa shootout, three suspected criminals were killed and 10 federal agents and soldiers wounded in a shootout in the town of Rio Bravo, across the border from Donna, Texas. Ten people, including three U.S. residents, suspected of having ties to the powerful Gulf cartel were arrested the next day.
Calderon has been fighting what can only be described as a REAL war on drugs, with heavy casualties, gunfights, assassinations of public figures, and extreme danger. Kudos to him. Maybe he’ll clean up the mess that PRI let fester.
I find this article so hard to believe. I’ve been assured by one of the most prominant authorities in the land, that family values don’t stop at the border.
Can anyone explain this to me? I can’t believe el numero uno could be so wrongo.
If we don’t get that border wall up, we are going to have the same things taking place here. We already have way too many murders, rapes, child molestations and other top level crimes associated with illegal immigration. It’s time to end it now.
Meanwhile, in the Phoenix, AZ suburbs:
Police Seek Kidnappers
January 18th, 2008 @ 12:56pm
by Dan Guerin/KTAR
Three men busted into a home near Broadway and Stapely in Mesa this morning and kidnapped two men living there.
“They bound both victims, and took the keys to one of the victim’s vehicles, and escorted them outside, put them in the victim’s truck and then they drove away with the victims inside the vehicle,” said Mesa Police Detective Chris Arvayo.
Arvayo said they don’t believe this was random and that the victims were targeted. (snip)
http://www.ktar.com/index.php?nid=6&sid=706381
This is a result of our insane drug policy. There are two ways to stop this and neither one of them are pretty.
1. We can legalize the drugs and thus take the money out of it. When drugs are a cheap commodity the violence will go out of it. We then only have to bury the druggies after they destroy themselves with cheap and available drugs. If we have a user that wants help to get off the drugs give it to him.
2. We can have a mandatory death sentence for anyone whom sells an illegal drug regardless of age.
Both solutions will work and as I said, both or ugly. The only thing uglier is our present policy.
What is “Columbia”? I’ve heard of Colombia, but am not sure what Columbia is. A university somewhere?
If you could legalize all drugs in this moment, it would still need to be illegal for children.
The crime problem would persist.
Oh goody!
Now we can let them in as asylum seekers in unlimited numbers.
Ping.
Classic Mexican stuff. It's simply incredible what goes on down there and doesn't even get on the media radar in the U.S.
Mexicans have been exporting that violence to the United States for years.
ping
An US Citizen living and working in TJ recommended we not come to visit. Things are just too chaotic.
;-) Thanks for responding graciously to my impatient remark. It’s a pet-peeve of mine, since I spent a couple of months there....
Republicans need to change the subject from illegal immigration to why Mexicans are willing to go to such lengths to immigrate to the US.
Why is a country so rich in oil, has the same natural resources as US has a huge tourist trade, where the citizens of Mexico should be able to find jobs willing to leave their homes and family break the law and become illegal immigrants?
The answer my friends is because the only difference between Mexico and any other third world country is the financial aid they get from the US.
In the meantime, the corrupt officials bleed their country dry, allow drug cartels to run the country, and continue to tell their people it is all the US fault.
The people coming here are typically good people pushed to the point of breaking laws in order to feed their families.
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