Sunday, August 9, 2009

Re-Beat: The Guns of August Are Active; More Decapitations

Since my last beat coverage last Tuesday followers of this story will not be surprised to learn that more of our neighbors in Cd. Juárez have died violent deaths since then.

Only five of Monday's (August 3) assassinations had been reported when I posted last Tuesday August 2. By the time they were all counted fourteen were dead. On Tuesday eleven were killed, followed by seventeen on Wednesday and another eleven on Thursday.

Namiquipa, again: On Thursday two dead bodies were uncovered in a shallow makeshift grave off a road near Namiquipa, Chihuahua. The foot of one of the bodies had protruded through the ground and was seen by a passerby. They are believed to be the bodies of édgar Artemio García and Ramón Humberto Oviedo Sáenz. Garcia was the chief of police of Namiquipa and Oviedo was one of his deputies. They disappeared last October. About three weeks ago I reported the killing of the mayor of Namiquipa, Héctor Ariel Meixueiro Muñoz.

Over the weekend the death toll has been as follows, so far:

Friday: Seven dead. In the early hours of Friday August 7 Carlos Rodriguez Heredia, 36, died at the Clínica Juárez, of gunshot wounds. At 12:40 p.m. municipal police officer Felipe Galindo Reyes, 39, was killed in the parking lot of the Galerias Tec. Shopping Center. José Apolonio Landeros González, 40, was found dead of gunshot wounds at 4:42 p.m. at the junkyard known as Yonke Pepe's 2, in Col. Aztecas. At about 6:08 Friday evening three men traveling in a late-model green Chevrolet Avalanche pickup were assassinated in after being chased by their assassins. The men were riddled with bullets when the pickup turned over.

Then around 10 p.m. on Friday night at Archy's, a bar on Ave. Tecnológico that has had trouble before, Manuel Antonio Pacheco Ortiz, 29 años, and Raúl Ramón Rodríguez Rucobo, 21, were killed from multiple gunfire wounds to the head.

Saturday: Five persons were killed yesterday (Saturday) afternoon in Cd. Juarez. At 5:30 p.m. a blue Dodge Intrepid was abandoned in front of the Monument to Workers on Ave. Tecnológico. A still-bloody, decapitated head was left on the trunk of the automobile and the driver's door was left open. Just below it federal police found, in Diario's language (click here) "what they believe is part of the reproductive apparatus" of the victim. The body has not yet been located. It should be noted that last Wednesday August 5, five dead bodies were found at the exact same location, with the decapitated head of one of the bodies placed on the trunk of the automobile.

At 5:30 yesterday afternoon a group of men with face masks arrived at a private residence in Col. Vicente Guerrero and killed Carlos Cornejo Medrano, 41, and Benjamín Dueñas Chávez, 31, in the front patio.

At about the same time and on the same street (Valentín Gómez Farías), an unidentified man was gunned down by a passing car without license plates. He was about 30 years old, dressed in denim pants and a green shirt.

A few minutes later on Ave. Municipio Libre, two men and a woman in a cherry-colored Buick were shot at from another moving vehicle. The Buick kept driving forward to the intersection with Luis Mayo street, when they were apparently rescued by drivers in a white car. Nevertheless one of the victims died on the way to the hospital and the others were taken to a hospital.

Compiled from stories in Diario de Juarez and Norte de Juarez.

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