Mexican suspect: Juarez killings targeted vehicle of Texas jail guard

By Olivia Torres, AP
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Mexican suspect: Killing targeted US guard’s car

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A suspect in the killing of three people linked to the U.S. consulate says his gang was hunting for the vehicle of a Texas jail guard who was slain in one of the two white SUVs attacked, Mexican authorities said Tuesday.

The purported confession appears to suggest that El Paso jail officer Arthur H. Redelfs was targeted in the March 13 shootings in Ciudad Juarez that also killed his wife, Lesley A. Enriquez, an employee of the U.S. consulate in this border city. The husband of another consulate worker was killed in the other vehicle attacked.

A statement by the joint army, federal and state anti-crime task force in Chihuahua state said suspect Ricardo Valles de la Rosa confessed to acting as a lookout in the shootings. It said he had been imprisoned in the United States and deported in 2007, after which he took up with the Barrio Azteca gang.

According to the statement:

An Azteca gang leader “ordered him by telephone some days before to locate the white sport utility vehicle in which Arthur Hancock Redelfs was traveling, which he did on March 13 at a children’s party.”

Valles de la Rosa told investigators that “when the sport utility vehicle left that spot, he advised other colleagues in the Aztecas, who ordered him to follow it.”

By the time Redelfs’ white SUV reached the scene where the attack occurred, Valles de la Rosa was told to back off, because the Aztecas — as the gang is known in Mexico — had the vehicle located. He said that moments later he heard gunfire, and saw the bullet-ridden vehicle with a dead man and woman inside.

The couple’s 7-month-old daughter was later found wailing in the back of the vehicle.

The statement did not specify whether Redelfs’ job at the jail in El Paso, across the border from Juarez, was the reason he was followed and shot. One theory was that the Aztecas — whose members operate and are incarcerated on both sides of the border — could have sought revenge against Redelfs for events inside the jail.

Other theories had suggested the killings might have been a case of mistaken identity.

“The information the suspect has given is still being verified, so the authorities are not releasing other information on other probable participants in the double shootings and their probable motive,” the statement said.

Still, the statement appeared to strengthen the hypothesis that the third victim in the shootings — Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate — may have been killed because he left the same party in a white SUV similar to the one in which Redelfs and his wife died.

The statement said federal prosecutors were taking over the case and were expected to charge Valles de la Rosa with the murder of a rival gang member.

The suspected lookout in the killings had strong ties to the United States.

Valles de la Rosa was born in Ciudad Juarez in 1964, but left for El Paso with his parents at age 6 and lived there for 30 years. The statement said he joined a gang and was jailed in El Paso in 1995 and came into contact with the Aztecas while in jail. He was deported to Ciudad Juarez in 2007, and there he apparently became a lookout and enforcer for the Aztecas, whom authorities say work for the Juarez drug cartel on both sides of the border.

The statement said he confessed to killing four members of the rival Mexicles and “Artistas Asesinos” gangs.

He was ordered on Tuesday to be held for trial on weapons charges, for allegedly carrying a 9 mm pistol when he was arrested.

Killings continued in Ciudad Juarez and other northern Mexico cities Tuesday.

Gunmen burst into a workshop and adjoining house in Ciudad Juarez and killed five men and a baby girl. The motive in the shooting was still under investigation, police said. At least 15 other killings were reported in Juarez, which is one of the most violent cities in the world.

Farther east, soldiers clashed with gunmen in the border city of Rio Bravo, in Tamaulipas state. Three suspects were killed in the gunbattle, the Tamaulipas state government reported.

In the nearby city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, gunmen blocked roads early in the day, the state government said. Such roadblocks — often erected by parking stolen cars across roadways — are used by drug gangs to delay police and military patrols. The government said one person was wounded in a clash between gunmen and soldiers near the airport.

Reynosa officials issued an alert on the city’s Web site later Tuesday warning about “risky situations” on highways leading out of town.

In the coastal city of Tampico — farther south in Tamaulipas state — the bullet-ridden bodies of three men were found on a street, apparently the result of a shootout between rival gangs.

Officials in the central state of Morelos said they found four decapitated bodies along a road and the bodies of two brothers inside an apartment.

Morelos state prosecutors said the four mutilated bodies were found along a road from Cuernavaca to Acapulco. A note left at the scene threatened alleged drug trafficker Edgar Valdez Villareal, who authorities say is battling Hector Beltran Leyva for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Prosecutors said in a statement two brothers were shot to death inside an apartment in the town of Ahuatepec, just north of Cuernavaca.

Drug violence has claimed more than 17,900 lives across Mexico since December 2006.

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