Ex-Mexican police official shot dead in McAllen

El Paso Times ^ | Feb 06, 2003 | ap

[FITZ]

McALLEN -- A former Mexican federal police official who played a key role in busting powerful Mexican drug barons was shot to death Wednesday as he drove from the parking lot of an attorney's office in McAllen.

Police said Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni, 54, was killed by a single bullet to the head and neck area about 11 a.m. A bullet casing was recovered.

The sole passenger in the car told McAllen police that a man approached the car Gonzalez was in and fired at close range through the tinted driver's side window. The suspect fled in a car with a Louisiana license plate.

Paramedics were unable to save Gonzalez, who was pronounced dead at McAllen Medical Center at 12:24 p.m.

McAllen Police Department spokesman Alfonso Cantu said the witness was uninjured but appeared shaken from the killing.

"He wasn't able to provide much information," Cantu said. "I don't know what state of mind he's in. He appears a bit traumatized himself."

Gonzalez was a lead officer of the Mexican attorney general's office who was credited with bringing down the Pablo Acosta Villarreal drug cartel in 1988. Gonzalez was stationed in Juárez at the time.

Former El Paso FBI acting chief Matt Perez was in charge of the U.S. side of the 1988 operation, which ended with Acosta's dying in a hail of gunfire during a raid led by Gonzalez on his ranch in Santa Elena, Mexico, south of the Texas Big Bend area.

"I talked to (Gonzalez) two months ago. ... He knew where all of Mexico's skeletons were hidden," said Phil Jordan, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official and former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center. "He was the only Mexican official who stood by us throughout the investigation into the 1985 murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena."

More recently, Gonzalez alleged during a U.S. television interview that a former Mexican president was behind the murders of two political aides of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a presidential candidate for the Democratic Revolutionary Party in 1988 and 2000. He also alleged that the Carlos Salinas administration protected drug traffickers, a charge Salinas denied.

Gonzalez had reportedly been in McAllen under a federal witness protection program for the past 10 years and had a home there. Several Mexican police officials who worked under him were assassinated during the past two years.

[FITZ]

Sounds like one of the few goods ones.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

bump

[FITZ]

Texas bump

[bandleader]

Apparently,another "HERO" has fallen!God Bless Him and His Family!!

[templar]

Sounds like one of the few goods ones

Or one of the few brave ones.

[Bedford Forrest]

"Or one of the few brave ones."

Yes indeed. And it also sounds like Vicente Fox lacks the cajones to clean out his military and the federales. Of course, that does not make him particularly unusual.

[drypowder]

Mexico's official motto: Go along to get along or die. The corruption in Mexico is the under lying reason why so many Mexicans come to the US. It is my sense that if America would instead use the $ it now spends in supporting illeagal aliens to aid V. Fox in cleaning up the corruption in Mexico that it would result in a win win for both countries. I know easier said than done and of course this is predicated on the assumption that Fox wants to clean up the corruption, so he says.

[FITZ]

Maybe not such a good guy after all ---another newspaper account makes him seem quite different:

Assassination in North McAllen

McALLEN — An assassin fired a single shot into the window of a parked Mercedes- Benz Wednesday morning in North McAllen and killed a former high-ranking Mexican federal officer with close ties to drug kingpins.

Guillermo Gonzalez Cal-deroni, 54, was shot at 11 a.m. on the left side of his face while sitting in the driver’s seat outside a lawyer’s office on North 10th Street, Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said.

Calderoni died an hour and a half later at McAllen Medical Center. Another man that police did not identify was in the car when Calderoni was shot, but he was not injured in the shooting.

The silver Mercedes-Benz, valued at more than $100,000, was parked outside the office of Roberto Yzaguirre of the Yzaguirre & Chapa law firm.

Yzaguirre was one of several attorneys who defended Calderoni in a 1994 federal extradition trial related to charges that while in charge of Mexican federal agents, Calderoni was responsible for the torture of witnesses.

Yzaguirre, who considered Calderoni a close friend, said Wednesday’s shooting was unexpected and horrific.

“He was a very dignified man. He always told me the truth, and was a man who I could count on his word. A handshake was all I needed,” Yzaguirre said. “It was horrible what happened.”

http://www.themonitor.com/NewsPub/News/Stories/2003/02/05/10445073581.shtml

[thatramongirl]

Actually, Salinas and his brother invented charges against Gonzalez de Calderoni after he began to expose them. Look it up. He was not corrupt. PBS's Frontline has an excellent information on this.

I grew up on the border, and have read extensively. No one might ever read this, but in case, I thought I would clarify that for the good and honorable name of the Gonzalezes and Calderonis, GGC was an honest man, above reproach.

--Christina Ramon
Staunton, VA

[thatramongirl]

Actually, Salinas and his brother invented charges against Gonzalez de Calderoni after he began to expose them. Look it up. He was not corrupt. PBS's Frontline has an excellent information on this.

I grew up on the border, and have read extensively. No one might ever read this, but in case, I thought I would clarify that for the good and honorable name of the Gonzalezes and Calderonis, GGC was an honest man, above reproach.

[eleni121]

Brave Mexican police officers have paid a high price in the war on drugs.

And no doubt it is a war. But corruption continues....

An amazing story just out in Tijuana as the federales send in troops:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20070105-9999-1n5tjcrime.html