Details Emerge on Murder of Police Officer Who Taped Torture Session

 Diario reports (click here and here) this morning that Miguel Angel Salas Lopez, 34, the police officer who shot a widely viewed video tape of a torture session involving municipal police, had just entered his home in Col Vista de Ojitos, in the Southeast section of Juárez (near the river) when the alarm went off in his car, a white Hyundai parked outside.  This was shortly after midnight on Wednesday night.  From inside his home he tried several times to use his remote to turn off the alarm, which kept going off.  He emerged from his house wearing his bullet-proof vest and a 9 mm handgun. 

Four men were in hiding, waiting for him.  They shot at him with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun.  Salas was able to get eight shots off, wounding one of the assailants, before he was fatally shot.  The four men got into a pickup, which they abandoned about 20 blocks away.  The wounded man was dead and they left him in the pickup.  Nineteen spent cartridges from the AR-15 were recovered at the scene, and another 11 from the handgun.  Eight spent cartridges from Salas' gun were found at the scene.

State prosecutors, who investigate homicides, said they saw no connection between the murder of the officer and the release of the video he had shot of the torture session.  They emphasized that there was a decline in the number of homicides in Juárez between August and September of this year.