The slayings of four young Americans in Tijuana sowed fear in Southern California on Friday as Mexican prosecutors tried to determine whether the youths were involved in the country’s violent drug trade or innocent victims of a brutal crime.
The victims, two men and two women in their teens and early 20s, said they were headed for a night of partying across the border only to be found strangled, stabbed and beaten a few days later.
Mexican officials are investigating whether any of the four San Diego-area victims had ties to the drug trade, after a toxicology report tested positive for cocaine on the body of Brianna Hernandez, who was either 18 or 19.
PHOTO: AP
Another victim, Oscar Jorge Garcia, 23, was apprehended in the San Diego area in January last year with six illegal immigrants in the car, but never charged in the case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack said.
The parents of 20-year-old victim Carmen Jimena Ramos Chavez on Friday described a vibrant Chula Vista High graduate who worked at an amusement park for children and planned to become a hair stylist.
“She was a happy girl, with a desire to explore the world,” said her father, Rogelio Ramos Camano, of Chula Vista. “Young people are like that. They think nothing will happen. I was like that, too.”
Mexican prosecutors said the victims had been bound and tortured — common tactics by Mexican drug gangs — before being left in a van in a dusty slum on the outskirts of Tijuana.
Jose Manuel Yepiz, a spokesman for the Baja California state prosecutor’s office, said investigators were examining a threatening letter to one of the victims from a jail inmate in San Diego.
Prosecutors said they had ruled out the possibility that the killings were a case of drug gangs targeting tourists.
Tijuana, which sits across the border from San Diego, has a reputation as one of Mexico’s most violent border cities.
Authorities said 843 people were slain there last year, many in drug-related violence.
Since taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 45,000 soldiers to combat drug cartels in the country whose turf battles have killed more than 10,750 people over the last two-and-a-half years.
Violence had diminished in Tijuana in recent months, only to pick up a few weeks ago with seven police officers killed in brazen attacks on one day.
Victor Clark, a professor at San Diego State University’s Center for Latin American Studies, said criminal ties with any one of the Americans could have spelled disaster for the group.
“Maybe they broke the rules, which means death” when dealing with Mexico’s drug cartels, said Clark, a Tijuana resident and native.
“And they dragged their friends down with them,” he said.
Relatives said the victims were familiar with both sides of the border and navigating the area’s bilingual culture — but may have taken their safety for granted.
Ramos said he had often told his daughter, who was born in Tijuana but raised from a young age in the US, that Tijuana was too dangerous, and she assured him she was always careful.
Meanwhile, Mexico received eight armored vehicles as part of a US aid package to help the government with its nationwide fight against drug cartels, the government announced on Friday.
Officials held a ceremony to receive the vehicles, which the US embassy said would help protect federal police agents during counternarcotics operations.
The US has plans to deliver US$39 million in nonintrusive inspection equipment as well as new ballistics equipment for forensics laboratories in the next weeks. The US also has initiated a broad range of training programs in coordination with Mexican law enforcement authorities.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was