Mexico Arrests Gangster Wanted for US Consulate Murders
Law enforcement authorities in Mexico have captured a
fugitive cartel leader wanted by the US for the 2010 slaying of a pregnant
American consulate worker and her husband.
The FBI’s El Paso division said on Tuesday that Mexican
police had arrested Luis “El Tio” (‘The Uncle’) Gerrado Mendez over the weekend
in the city of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City.
A former member of the notoriously violent Barrio Azteca
gang and reputed founder of La Empresa (‘The Company’), a breakaway from the
Juarez Cartel, Mendez faces a raft of federal charges in the US, including
murder, drug trafficking and racketeering.
In March 2010, members of the Azteca gang opened fire on two
white SUVs as the vehicles left a children’s party at the border town of Ciudad
Juarez in the northern state of Chihuahua.
Consulate worker Lesley Enriquez, pregnant with her second
child, died of a bullet wound to the neck, and her husband Arthur Redelfs was
shot through his right eye, according to The New York Times.
The couple’s one-year-old daughter survived the attack and
was found unharmed in the back of the car, although two children inside the
party were reportedly injured by stray gunfire. In the second vehicle,
first-responders found the body of Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, a state
police officer who was married to a Mexican employee at the US consulate.
The Aztecas reportedly mistook the white vehicles as
belonging to a rival drug trafficking ring. Amid rising violence between
warring cartels in the state at the time, the US had already begun the process
of extracting non-essential government employees from the region.
The US indicted 35 members of the gang in the aftermath of
the killings. With Mendez’s recent arrest, which follows after the FBI
republicised their warrant to mark the ten-year anniversary of the attack, all
those charged have since been captured, according to Channel4News.
News of Mendez’s capture follows after the murder of a
convicted enforcer for the Sinaloa Cartel and two members of his family in the
Sinaloan state capital of Culiacan on Sunday, as reported by El Sol de Sinaloa.
Authorities discovered the body of Jose Rodrigo ‘El Chino
Anthrax’ (‘Chinese Anthrax’) Arechiga Gamboa, in a sports vehicle abandoned on
a dirt road outside of the city. The three other victims included his sister
Ada Jimena and his brother-in-law Juan Guillermo Garcia.
The Sinaloa Cartel is the largest trafficker of drugs in the
Western Hemisphere, with an estimated annual turnover of US$3 billion.
The group also made headlines early on Wednesday, when
Margarito Flores, who with his twin brother Pedro was a once-closely trusted
aide to kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo (‘Shorty’) Guzman, asked the state of Chicago
for his release from prison for fear of being infected with the novel
coronavirus while he serves time on drug charges, according to ABC7Chicago.
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