Mexican Radio Announcer Gunned Down

http://www.comcast.net/ ^ | 3 10 06 | JORGE VARGAS

[freepatriot32]

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - An anchorman for a Mexican radio station was shot to death early Friday by gunmen waiting for him in the bushes in front of his house in this violent border city.

Ramiro Tellez Contreras, who also worked for the state emergency services and was a former policeman, was hit by two bullets in the neck and two in the chest, state police said in a news release.

Witnesses told authorities that Tellez was attacked about 5:45 a.m. when he was returning home from his job with the emergency services.

Tellez is the 46th homicide victim this year in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 330,000 across the border from Laredo, Texas.

Authorities say most of the killings stem from a bloody turf war between two drug cartels fighting over lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

Tellez, 45, was the anchor for a general news program on national radio network EXA, covering politics and crime among other issues.

In his job with the state emergency services he directed a center that received calls for help, similar to 911 calls in the United States.

The state police did not comment on whether the killing was connected to Tellez's work.

On Thursday, gunmen in the central Mexican state of Michoacan gunned down Jaime Arturo Olvera, a former photographer for the local La Voz newspaper, state police said.

Michoacan state detective Jorge Luis Mejia said Olvera, 38, left La Voz in 2003. The newspaper said Olvera continued to do freelance photography involving the police beat for local newspapers.

Olvera was shot in the neck as he took his 5-year-old son to school, Mejia said. The son was not harmed.

Various news media watchdog groups have classified Mexico as one of the most dangerous places in the Western Hemisphere to be a journalist, largely because of the violent drug cartels operating here. Seven journalists have been killed since 2004, not including this week's deaths.

In February, armed gunmen opened fire and launched a grenade at the offices of El Manana, a daily newspaper in Nuevo Laredo, seriously injuring a reporter.

Three weeks later, President Vicente Fox named a university law professor to the new post of special prosecutor for crimes against journalists.

[DumpsterDiver]

Greetings from Ole Mexico

Greetings! Where in Mexico are you living? (Not Nuevo Laredo, I hope.)

[dennisw]

RE legalise drugs and there would be no more smuggling routes and homicides would dry up along with the smuggling routes

Sorry bub. Methedrine will never be legalized but if we hang the pushers it'll put a big dent in the trade