By Jay Root - McClatchy Newspapers
Issue date: 5/8/08 Section: MCT News
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico _ The lights of the bullet-ridden sedan were still shining when the investigators arrived. Police Capt. Saul Pena Lopez had been rushed to the hospital by then, but the blood-soaked pavement suggested he wouldn't be there long.
Under the guard of machine-gun-toting Army soldiers _ sent here to quell a record outbreak of mafia shootouts, kidnappings and unsolved murders _ the father of four died in the hospital from multiple gunshot wounds before midnight Tuesday. He was being buried Thursday.
Pena's murder made him the 15th law enforcement agent to be slain in violence-wracked Ciudad Juarez since the beginning of the year, city police officials said. The 14th, a state prosecutor, died 24 hours earlier in a pool of blood in front of her home, where authorities retrieved 32 shell casings fired from AK-47 rifles.
In both cases, the armed assailants got away.
More than a month after Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched more than 2,000 soldiers to the troubled border city, execution-style murders remain commonplace _ and usually unsolved _ as heavily armed drug cartels battle for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes into the United States.
"Even for a violent city like Juarez, this is pretty amazing," said Tony Payan, a drug cartel expert in El Paso, Texas, and author of the book "The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security." "It's unprecedented."
Authorities already were grappling with record violence in 2007, when Calderon sent more than 20,000 troops throughout the country to battle the cartels. The response from the mafia kingpins was spectacularly swift and bloody.
Suspected drug traffickers gunned down a senior federal investigator in charge of gathering intelligence on drug traffickers in May 2007 and knocked off a federal police commander last September. They also were blamed for the beheadings of two Mexico City customs officials in December _ presumably revenge-killings stemming from a cocaine bust. All told, the death toll eclipsed 2,500 last year. And 2008, with more than 1,000 killed so far, is on track to match or surpass that record, according to published reports.
Under the guard of machine-gun-toting Army soldiers _ sent here to quell a record outbreak of mafia shootouts, kidnappings and unsolved murders _ the father of four died in the hospital from multiple gunshot wounds before midnight Tuesday. He was being buried Thursday.
Pena's murder made him the 15th law enforcement agent to be slain in violence-wracked Ciudad Juarez since the beginning of the year, city police officials said. The 14th, a state prosecutor, died 24 hours earlier in a pool of blood in front of her home, where authorities retrieved 32 shell casings fired from AK-47 rifles.
In both cases, the armed assailants got away.
More than a month after Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched more than 2,000 soldiers to the troubled border city, execution-style murders remain commonplace _ and usually unsolved _ as heavily armed drug cartels battle for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes into the United States.
"Even for a violent city like Juarez, this is pretty amazing," said Tony Payan, a drug cartel expert in El Paso, Texas, and author of the book "The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security." "It's unprecedented."
Authorities already were grappling with record violence in 2007, when Calderon sent more than 20,000 troops throughout the country to battle the cartels. The response from the mafia kingpins was spectacularly swift and bloody.
Suspected drug traffickers gunned down a senior federal investigator in charge of gathering intelligence on drug traffickers in May 2007 and knocked off a federal police commander last September. They also were blamed for the beheadings of two Mexico City customs officials in December _ presumably revenge-killings stemming from a cocaine bust. All told, the death toll eclipsed 2,500 last year. And 2008, with more than 1,000 killed so far, is on track to match or surpass that record, according to published reports.
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