Death Comes with a Message

LAREDO MORNING TIMES

03/30/2006

NUEVO LAREDO - The latest homicide victim found in the Sister City on Monday bore messages scrawled in marker on his bare skin, including a reference to one of the two major drug cartels believed to be fighting for control of the area. "This is for the chapos and the media," read one message in Spanish, which was written on the unidentified man's back. Chapo Guzman is the leader of one of the cartels. The other message, also in Spanish, read "we want to cook them, not dump them," an apparent reference to incinerated bodies that have been found, the most recent one on Tuesday.

That message was written on the victim's abdomen.

C-4, the city's emergency headquarters, received a call at about 10 a.m. that there was a body lying about 325 yards west of the Carretera Nacional at the 12-kilometer marker south of downtown.

State police were sent to the scene, which turned out to be less than three blocks from an office of the Policía Federal Preventiva, the federal preventive police.
Officials said the victim was wearing only blue boxers and had been shot several times. It appeared, due to the decomposition, that the victim had been dead for several days. He was believed to be between 20 and 30 years old.

Raúl Galindo Vira of the state police was in charge at the scene. Investigators recovered six 9 mm shell casings.

Monday night, at about 9 p.m., officers discovered the bodies of two people lying next to a white Ford Probe near the intersection of Privada Arteaga and Francisco Villa, in the Buenavista neighborhood. The car still had its lights and motor on when state police arrived.

The deceased were identified as Sergio Montes Arreola, 14, and Carlos Armando Paz González, 20. Paz González was identified by a younger brother at the scene. Montes Arreola was later identified as the son of Juan Sergio Montes Borjas, a state police commander who was shot dead last May as he was driving down Colosio boulevard with his partner in the Benito Juárez neighborhood.

Several hours after those two victims were found, state police reported the discovery early Tuesday of a burned body inside a 1996 Dodge Dakota pickup, which had been abandoned at the 18-kilometer marker on the Carretera Nacional.

The truck had several bullet holes; the victim has not been identified. With these deaths, the year's death toll rises to at least 61.

©Laredo Morning Times 2006