Posted on 11/15/2003 9:24:22 AM PST by Theodore R.
Violent streak continues Man shot dead in front of his North Laredo home
BY ROBERT GARCIA Times city editor
Laredo's latest murder occurred Friday in front of a home nestled in a subdivision lined with $300,000 homes in the city's north side.
Dozens of police units rushed to the area and located the victim shot several times in the head. His body was slumped on the driver's side of a 2003 Cadillac CTS parked outside a home located at the 2000 block of Manzanares.
Laredo Police Investigator Tony Reyes identified the victim as Hiram Vasquez-Puebla, 24, of the same address.
In front of the Cadillac, which had Mexican license plates, were several spent casings and an AK-47 lying on the pavement.
As police went about the shooting scene, Vasquez' wife, carrying their baby boy, was escorted from her home by her brother to a waiting car that drove them away.
Reyes said the woman and the child were inside the house when the shooting occurred.
Before the despondent widow left her home, an emotional relative, who was not allowed on to the property, screamed for someone to get an ambulance and provide help to the victim. She did not know that Vasquez was dead.
"Where was the police, they are supposed to be patrolling, where were they," she screamed.
Investigators were working on the theory that Vasquez' executioners were driving two different vehicles, a Suburban and a Ford pickup truck.
Police believe the suspects in the Suburban were parked in Vasquez's driveway. The pickup truck was on the street in front of the house with its passengers waiting in the vehicle. When Vasquez drove up, at least three men got off the vehicles and opened fire on him. The Cadillac's windshield was shattered.
Police officials investigating the scene reported casings from "at least" four different weapons, many of which were of high caliber, were found at the site.
The bullets struck the Cadillac driver's side and all along to the back, its rear window was also broken as bullets battered the car.
But police officers on the scene began to wonder if either Vasquez, who officials confirmed received more than 20 gunshot wounds to his body, or someone who was with Vasquez managed to return fire.
A few minutes later, patrol officers searching for the two vehicles seen leaving the murder scene got their answer.
Officers located a Ford pickup truck at Woodridge and International.
Inside the vehicle they found spent casing and blood stains.
The Ford truck's rear window was shattered by gunfire.
Investigators believe someone fired at the fleeing pickup truck as the suspects left the murder scene.
That is the reason the rear window was broken and why a bullet struck a home located on the opposite side of the Vasquez' home, said police. At the murder scene, dozens of nearby residents, many with a look of concern watched as a small army of police officers swarmed the 2000 block of Manzanares.
Police officers went house-to-house trying to find witnesses, and any type of information that could lead them to the suspects.
Some of the people spoke with the officers, however many other homes were empty. It was not known if the residents were not home when the shooting happened or they had just left because of fear.
Hiram Vasquez had managed to escape alive last September following a barrage of gunfire that left him hospitalized with a bullet wound to his left thigh.
He was charged with attempted murder after being involved in an exchange of gunfire at the intersection of Eistetter and Seymour.
Among the police investigating teams at the Manzanares shooting scene was Police Chief Agustin Dovalina. Dovalina was shown some of the evidence. Other top ranking officers there included Deputy Chiefs Gilberto Navarro, Ivan Perez and Assistant Chief Eleodoro Granados. Top ranking officers rarely visit crime scenes.
None of the chiefs gave any comments to the press. Missing at the scene were the department's top homicide investigators Ismael Alardin and Gaspar Ambrose, both men may be on vacation. Justice of the Peace Oscar Martinez ordered that an autopsy be performed on Vasquez in San Antonio.
(City editor Robert Garcia can be reached at 728-2581 or by email at )
Times staff reporter Celina Alvardo contributed to this story.
11/15/03
Go back to Mexico, hire your own bodyguards. Why should American citizens have to hire protection for Mexican drug lords? Why should one American cop die protecting a drug lord or his family.
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