Monday, August 16, 2010

Death in the Afternoon: And More, as the Beat Goes On: 47 on the Weekend

From Diario (click here): Yesterday afternoon at about 2 p.m. on Los Ángeles, a residential street in Col. Industrial, three pickups pulled up to a recently rented house where people, mainly women, had been partying for three days. The men in the pickups, all of them armed, surrounded the house, and a few of them entered. Then witnesses say they heard gunfire. Thinking it would be over in a few moments, neighbors were surprised gunshots could be heard in the house as much as twenty minutes later. Then the men walked out of the house calmly, bought some popsicles and snow cones from a street vendor who was passing by, and left. Only then did police arrive, to find four persons dead, three women, and one man. Four more women were injured. All of the women killed or injured were between 18 and 24 years old. The man killed was Rogelio Orozco, 26. The weapons used were AK-47 and R-15.

The 47 persons killed in Juarez this weekend tied the record set this year on a weekend in January and another in July. On Friday twenty persons lost their lives, 6 were killed on Saturday, and 21 were killed yesterday.

A few hours before the Los
Ángeles killings, at about 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, five persons were killed at a residential home in Col. Infonavit Solidaridad, when a birthday party, for a woman who turned 20 on Saturday, was interrupted by assassins. The victims were shot while sitting at tables in plastic chairs provided for the party. Hours later, according to Norte (click here) the gunmen returned to kill one of the survivors.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yet none of the victims or survivors were armed. What would happen if citizens were armed and trained by the government?? Ask the Swiss.

Jose Z. Garcia said...

Excellent point. In Mexico it is extremely difficult to get government permission to own a gun, much less carry one. If a situation like that of Juarez were occurring in the U.S. by this time virtually all citizens would be carrying a weapon (especially West of the Pecos River, as in the old days before law enforcement worked) and experienced gun hands would be making millions training people to use them. And, no matter how superior their force against the victim, assassins would have to fear being shot before killing the victim or shot afterwards by bystanders. If everyone in Juarez were carrying a loaded weapon there would be a lot more dead assassins, kidnappers, and especially extortionists. There are many sound reasons to be wary of efforts by any level of government to enact gun control.

Anonymous said...

In Mexico, regular people have no justice and no protection.

They can't rely on the corrupt police to protect them, and they can't protect themselves because they are not allowed to have guns.

Its time to try something different. Let law abiding citizens protect themselves.