http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/may/14/drug-ties-suspected-four-chula-vista-residents-dea/
Drug Ties Suspected With Four Chula Vista Residents Dead in Tijuana
By Amy Isackson
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Baja California’s Attorney General says four Chula Vista residents killed in Tijuana last Saturday were not tourists looking for a good time south of the border. The Attorney General strongly suspects the group had drug ties.
Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno says a relative of Briana Hernandez - she’s one of two women killed - turned over a letter from a woman serving time on drug charges in Southern California.
Moreno says the letter threatened Hernandez and the others that they’d come to an end with cocaine up their noses.
The four bodies were found in blankets inside a van in a residential area in eastern Tijuana.
Authorities say Hernandez tested positive for cocaine.
Moreno says he can say categorically the four were not innocent victims.
“The fact that a young woman uses coke and has ties to a woman in jail on drug charges rules out that she’s the kind of person who’s simply a university student.” (translated from Spanish)
Moreno says the four crossed the border often and were comfortable on both sides.
He says he’s working with US authorities in the ongoing investigation.
Ping to above PBS article.
Investigators gather clues in 4 slayings
May 15, 2009
TIJUANA A letter sent from a California prison inmate, an identification card picked up in a Tijuana house, and numerous interviews with friends and family members are helping Baja California investigators piece together the events that led to last week’s killings of four San Diego County residents.
... Mexican authorities described the victims as young Mexican-Americans who frequently crossed from San Diego to party in Tijuana. The U.S. Consulate in Tijuana confirmed yesterday that all four were U.S. citizens: Brianna Hernandez Aguilera, 19; Carmen Jimena Ramos Chavez, 20; Oscar Jorge Garcia Cota, 23; and Luis Antonio Gamez, 21.
We are presuming that these people had connections in Mexico and the United States with criminals, Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno Manjarrez said in an interview.
A key piece of evidence is a letter sent to Hernandez by a woman serving time in a California prison on a drug charge, Moreno said. He described the letter’s tone as threatening and said we are reviewing the text of the letter, line by line, with great seriousness.
... Relatives of the two women, both Chula Vista residents, have told investigators that the women went to Tijuana on Thursday night to party. On Friday night, family members filed a missing persons report after the women failed to answer their cell phones, the Chula Vista Police Department said.
... Mexican authorities said they did not know if any of the victims had criminal records. One of the men, Garcia, was arrested on suspicion of alien smuggling in January 2008 after he was stopped while driving a vehicle with six illegal immigrants aboard, but he was not charged, said Lauren Mack, spokeswoman in San Diego for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The two women were recent graduates of Chula Vista High School, Sweetwater Union High School District spokeswoman Lillian Leopold confirmed. Garcia attended Southwest High School in Nestor but did not graduate, she said.
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