Friday, December 11, 2009

Season of Peace? Forget it: the Beat Goes on 2469 and Counting

Fifteen dead on Thursday:

Thursday evening, 6 p.m., Dec. 10: A woman who was leaving the CERESO prison grounds, driving a blue Chevrolet Optra, was shot and killed in an attack by a commando group that caught up to her vehicle and started shooting. The woman lost control of the vehicle and crashed into the median strip in front of the Abraham Chavez Airport on the Pan American highway. She was pronounced dead on the scene, with eleven gunshot wounds. There was speculation the woman may have worked at the prison. Another woman was shot and killed a week ago in the same spot; lightning can strike twice.

One man was killed, another wounded, at about 1 am on Thursday morning as they were released from confinement at CERESO prison, where they had been held on charges of drug trafficking. Norte reports they were hugging and kissing family members who had come to pick them up as they were released, when a van drove by and began shooting. The van was abandoned a few blocks away. The man killed was José González Morúa, 28. He had spent one year and 8 months in prison and was being released on parole.

A municipal police officer, with the Juarez police force for the last three years, was shot and killed on Thursday afternoon while he was on patrol in his patrol car, on Gomez Marin near Faraday. Diario reports the police officer, Heriberto Soto Soria,33, under attack, lost control of his vehicle, which careened into the flow of oncoming traffic, crashing on the sidewalk. His patrol mate was wounded and taken to the hospital.

A man was found dead in Col. Chaveña at 7:15 a.m. on Thursday, with a .38 caliber gunshot wound to the neck. At 10:20 a.m. the body of a man, Alonso Morales, 20, was found dead outside a grocery store in Infonavit Casas Grandes. He was shot by men in an SUV. A few minutes later a man was reported dead from gunshot wounds inside a home on km. 5 of the Casas Grandes highway, just outside of town.

At 11:30 a.m. two more persons were found dead at the "Live Without Drugs" rehabilitation center, although the center has not been operating for some time. This is not the first time people have been killed in this location. Drug rehab centers have come under violent attack in recent months, with a mass murder of seventeen inmates at one center in August. At that time it was rumored that many drug rehabilitation centers were recruiting grounds for retail drug trafficking operators, and most centers have closed down.

At noon a man was shot and killed inside a glass shop in Granjas de Chapultepec.

At 3 p.m. three men were shot at, two killed, in an attack by an armed commando group in Col. Granjero.

A little after 5 p.m. four men were killed by gunfire as they were sitting in a Chevrolet Avalanche in the parking lot of the Bar Miros,Óscar Flores and Jesús M. Ríos. Two of the men died at the scene, two more after receiving medical attention.

Seventeen persons were killed on Wednesday. So far, no holiday let-up. 109 persons have been killed so far in December.

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