Posted on 05/13/2005 4:37:59 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — Four Americans from the Laredo area, including an eight-year Navy veteran, have been missing since Saturday, when they headed for Nuevo Laredo together in the wee hours, officials and family members say.
Benito Garcia, 28; Reyes Aguirre Castillo, 25; Manuel Alfaro, 27; and Gerardo Ruiz, 24, partied Friday at various places in Laredo before driving to Mexico in a gold 1993 Lincoln shortly before 4 a.m. Saturday, officials said.
"We know when they crossed and they were headed to" the red light district, said Roberto Maldonado Siller, the chief prosecutor here for the state of Tamaulipas. "But we don't have any information that anyone saw them there."
There have been at least 32 reported cases of kidnapped Americans, many involving Laredoans who paid ransom money to be returned, since August in this city of 400,000 people, 21/2 hours drive south of San Antonio on Interstate 35.
Most, but not all, of those targeted likely were involved with the drug trade, officials say. Authorities wouldn't speculate on the four men's whereabout or why they might be missing.
The U.S. government recently reissued a travel alert for the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, specifically pointing out Nuevo Laredo because of increased violence from rival drug gangs vying for shipping routes north.
Family members of the four men filed missing persons reports with police on both sides of the border, as well as the U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo. The FBI in Laredo said that agency hasn't been notified of the incident, although family members and Maldonado said it had.
A Laredo Police Department detective familiar with the preliminary investigation said one of the four has a minor conviction and none of their names showed up as affiliated with organized crime on various lists.
"I am not saying my son is a saint, but he's not in a gang," said Alfaro's mother, Maria de Jesus Alfaro. "He likes to drink beer."
Garcia has been unemployed in the year since his Navy service and was planning to join the Army National Guard, family members said.
Aguirre's family couldn't be reached for comment. Ruiz works at a restaurant, and Alfaro is a sanitary worker for the city of Laredo, said Ruiz's parents and Alfaro's mother as they waited outside the police headquarters here.
They said a friend said the group crossed the border along with two women they met at a dance bar in Laredo.
"Probably what happened is, they were drinking with the two women and came across" after the bars closed in Laredo, said Olga Ruiz, adding that her son has various tattoos on his forearms, including the large letters "R-U-I-Z," the head of a Viking and the phrase, "In Memory of Walo."
Mexican police said they haven't been contacted about any missing women from this case.
The only hope so far came Wednesday when an anonymous phone caller told Garcia's aunt, "Come and get your kids before it gets dark," and left a specific address in Nuevo Laredo, Olga Ruiz said.
When police and family members arrived there, however, the house was vacant and trashy.
Because Garcia's family made a public plea for help on the radio, police said the call might have been a prank, but family members said there were signs indicating the men had been in the house.
"My son's shoes were there," Alfaro's mother said.
The Lincoln hasn't turned up. Francisco Ruiz, Ruiz's father, said he isn't confident that enough is being done, a common reaction among families looking for loved ones missing along the border.
"What we want is somebody to help us," he said. "Here they don't care. They act as if it doesn't bother them."
The Laredo police detective, who asked not to be identified for safety concerns, said cases such as this one are frustrating because U.S. authorities don't have jurisdiction in Mexico.
"Usually, it's two or one, but this all in one group. ... Heaven knows what happened," the detective said. "I hope they are cut loose. We can't do much other than wait for calls."
The detective said the U.S. Consulate, which monitors and encourages Mexican investigations of missing Americans, is trying to determine if these four are in any way linked to recent killings in Monterrey, Mexico's third largest city.
According to news reports, two gasoline-doused bodies were burned outside Monterrey on Sunday, one near a highway. Officials found the second body 2 miles away in the trunk of a torched vehicle. Neither has been identified, a spokesman for the state of Nuevo Leon attorney general's office said Thursday.
Ricardo Lugo of Laredo, who was being investigated for drug trafficking in Texas, was shot dead Monday at a Monterrey arcade, along with a second Mexican man.
The U.S. Consulate would not comment about the missing persons' case Thursday, but Diana Page, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said: "We have been informed and are looking into the case of four people who are missing."
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jbogan@express-news.net
Dane Schiller of the Express-News Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
In the red light district!
Boys Town Ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
Only one reason to go to "Boys Town"...dangerous place
feelthy very feelthy
Mexico must be furnishing us with huge amounts of oil. That's the only reason I can figure that they keep poking us in the eyes and we do nothing.
Did they move it? I thought that dump opposite Del Rio was 'Boy's town'.
Make money the old fashioned way...Kidnap people someone
might want back enough to pay for their return...
CLOSE THE FREAKING BORDER!
WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE?
THE NEXT 9/11?
HOW MANY MURDERED HOUSEWIVES?
HOW MANY MURDERED COPS?
WHAT DO WE NEED, TWO TRUCKS OF DEAD BABIES?
I'VE HAD IT!
Are you referring to these stupid fools?
"Benito Garcia, 28; Reyes Aguirre Castillo, 25; Manuel Alfaro, 27; and Gerardo Ruiz, 24, partied Friday at various places in Laredo before driving to Mexico in a gold 1993 Lincoln shortly before 4 a.m. Saturday, officials said."
(can I say that here?)
(no.) :-)
If we were getting huge amounts of oil it would be reflected all over the place; spot oil mkt, oil futures, gas pumps etc. There are no secrets from people on oil. So Bush's dirty little secret is still a secret.
You can say no more..........................: )
ROTF!!
It will probably take a civil war, or something close to it.
Laredo is a hellhole. Just moved away after 5 long years. Couldn't leave the house w/o a gun.
If these vatos disappeared there, they were likely involved in the drug trade as well.
Almost everyone in Laredo is dirty. Just for fun, google the the following terms: 'Rubio', 'Corruption,' "district attorney" and "laredo". See what the US attorney found out.
All border town red light areas are called boys town.
Anyone going to a Mexico border town takes life too lightly.
They might not have jurisdiction down there, but the fbi and our own police use our tax dollars (even congress doesn't know how much) to train their police, and have done investigations down there. The french also "train" their police, along with cubans (and Israelis).
In other missing-persons news, fourteen million Mexican men vanished into the United States in the past three years...
It's probably going to take a Democrat President, sad to say.
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