Tecate Police Official Assassinated

[Willowdared]

Tecate police official assassinated day after tunnel is found

By Greg Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE BREAKING NEWS TEAM
12:05 p.m. December 4, 2007
TECATE, Mexico – A high-ranking municipal police official was assassinated Tuesday in a predawn raid on his home, less than a day after a drug-smuggling tunnel and a cache of marijuana were discovered just across the border in Tecate, Ca.

The Baja California state Attorney General's office said a group of heavily armed gunmen broke into the home of Jose Juan Soriano Pereira about 2 a.m. Tuesday and shot him into death.

Soriano's body was found next to his bed, said state justice spokesman Ernesto Alvarez Ponce. His wife and children were unhurt.

According to neighbors, the gunmen loudly smashed their way into the house – loud enough to alert Soriano, who tried in vain to stop them, Alvarez said.

He said investigators found 45 shell casings of .223-caliber and 7.62-millimeter ammunition at the house.

Soriano was the interim sub-director of operations for the Tecate municipal police department. He was 35.

Police later found two abandoned pickups – a Toyota Tundra and a Ford F-150 Lobo – suspected of having been used by the killers. Inside, officers found discarded gloves and hooded sweatshirts, along with other undisclosed items being examined by investigators.

The Tundra bore California license plates, while the Ford had no plates, Alvarez said.

There was speculation in news reports Tuesday that Soriano's slaying was related to the discovery by U.S. Border Patrol agents of the drug-smuggling tunnel in the same area the day before, just across the border from this small industrial city, about 40 miles east of Tijuana.

According to Mexican news reports, Soriano had gone down into the tunnel Monday after its discovery to photograph its interior.

The entrance on the U.S. side was covered by a shipping container that was found to contain 15,000 pounds of marijuana in tightly wrapped bundles.

Numerous tunnels, principally devoted to smuggling drugs, have been found under the U.S.-Mexico border since the early 1990s, including several between Tijuana and San Diego.

[armsmaster270]

When are they going to learn when the drug lords lose product a high mexican police official is going to be snuffed in retaliation.

[Willowdared]

Here's the tunnel story

Agent finds pot-filled container with cross-border tunnel beneath

By Sandra Dibble and Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS
December 4, 2007

TECATE – U.S. and Mexican authorities were investigating a drug tunnel found near the Tecate border crossing that leads from a shipping container filled with tightly wrapped bundles of marijuana.

An agent on routine patrol investigated the trailer-sized container in the corner of a private lot a few hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border when his dog picked up the scent of drugs. Peering inside, the agent saw someone with a semiautomatic weapon disappear down a hole inside the container.

Authorities had not found the other end of the tunnel as of yesterday evening. Its U.S. entrance measures about 3 feet by 3 feet, and it is reinforced with lumber, agents said.

“This tunnel is significantly sophisticated,” said Damon Foreman, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. “It's not just a crawl tunnel where we can push drugs through.”

The only detail Foreman had about the tunnel was that it was ventilated. An interagency Tunnel Task Force was working with Mexican authorities to determine its stability before venturing deep inside.

Authorities had begun moving bundles of what appeared to be marijuana from the container.

Flavio Aguirre, an auto broker in Tecate, Mexico, owns the land. He said he rented it a couple of years ago to men who said they had a furniture-moving company and used unmarked trucks. The men paid $2,000 a month in rent, Aguirre said.

Mary Mercado Bertheau, administrative manager at a nearby brokerage firm, said she and others noticed a couple of months ago that the trailer had been brought in and a small canopy had been set up.

In Mexico, soldiers, federal investigators and city police were stationed at intersections near the Tecate crossing, which is surrounded by businesses and homes.

Tunnels are typically built to smuggle people or drugs into the United States. More than 58 tunnels have been found along the U.S.-Mexico border since the 1990s, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Most of them were found after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as border security tightened and smugglers were forced to find alternate ways to move drugs and people across.

The tunnels range from crudely built holes near the border fence to sophisticated passageways more than 2,000 feet long that start and end in homes or businesses. Some have had pulley systems to hoist large loads of drugs as well as systems to pump out water that accumulates underground.

[MacLean]

We all sleep sometime, and we can all be had.

I'm sure if he's looking down he's glad they didn't mess with his family, like some of the cartels do.

If he was providing protection and failed, then he's looking up but still glad.

We haven't ever treated this "war on drugs" like a real war. We've treated it as a criminal justice problem, just like we tried and failed with terrorism.

Shame, really.

[BEK]

Wow, its like someone was warning about this corruption before and how dangerous Mexico and the drug cartels were. I cant put my finger on which LEF'er it was that had stated this...............

[ex401mp]

[MacLean]

Wow, its like someone was warning about this corruption before and how dangerous Mexico and the drug cartels were. I cant put my finger on which LEF'er it was that had stated this...............

Hmmm, must have been SaraJ.