Rosarito Beach Mexico: Mexican authorities say they are investigating a shooting of a U.S. Marine early yesterday morning in which Mexican marines shot and wounded Pfc. Joshua Kendall Monnet who they say was driving a vehicle near a checkpoint. 

Mexican military authorities based in Ensenada Baja said the marines at the checkpoint indicated to Monnet that he should stop his vehicle. They said the Mexican marines opened fire shortly thereafter. Most of the details that led to the shooting are being with hold by Mexican authorities. Calls to the Mexican Marines and other Ensenada civilian authorities shed very little light on what actually happened.

U.S. Marine authorities at Camp Pendleton California said the information was new to them; however they would be looking into the matter and check whether the shooting involved a Camp Pendleton Marine.

Gangland style executions of four people are believed Americans who were shot and killed near the main highway between Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. First reported by local police who were the first on the crime scene told the Laguna Journal by phone that five victims were executed, four of them appear to be Americans three men and a women. Police say,” we are withholding the names of the victims until relatives in the states can be notified”.  

La Mesa woman Libby Gianna Craig believed to be an American was among four people found shot to death in a canyon near Rosarito Beach in Baja California, official’s said.

The 28-year-old was in an area known as Morro Canyon along with three Afro-American males; Mexican police described three of the dead men as “Black Americans”. Early reports also said more bodies were found in a separate location at different points of Playas de Rosarito, reported some Mexican papers.

Shortly after the Baja Attorney General de Justicia del Estado took over the investigation the official word changed and the press was told of only four people killed three Mexican nationals and one female of Mexican decent and denied that the male victims were Americans.

This was a complete reversal from the on the crime scene investigating police officers who reported the three men were Afro-Americans and the names were being with hold pending notification of the next of kin in the states.

A high ranking Mexican army officer has told the Laguna Journal that he and others of received word to not talk with or report any American deaths to the media. Click on or Google Four or more Americans executed in Mexico

Many Mexico business owners and the Mexican Chamber Of Commerce have been complaining that the American media has been reporting that Americans have been executed, kidnapped for ransom and victims of other crimes while in Mexico. Juan Ortiz a Tijuana business owner told the Journal that business is down some 50% since those recent news reports.  “I don’t believe those reports all it is doing is scaring people and keeping them from coming to Mexico”. Mr. Ortiz said.

Reuters reported at 9:52 a.m. May 19,2008 dateline ROSARITO, Mexico reported four people believed to be Americans were shot in the head and dumped in a notorious drug-smuggling area in northern Mexico near the border with California, Mexican police said Monday.

Police in the beach town of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego, said they discovered the bodies of three men and a woman Sunday in an abandoned car in a remote patch of scrubland near the Pacific coast.

Police concluded the victims were U.S. citizens and said the three men were of African-American appearance, the woman was Caucasian and a U.S. driver’s license was found in the car, the spokesman said. Click on Four people believed to be Americans were shot in the head

All the shootings were apparently deliberate, targeted, not just random bystanders caught up in the wave of violence that has engulfed U.S. Mexican border cities, Mexican authorities said.

Details are sketchy but the first murder occurred after two PM in the colony in the ejido Mina Primo Tapia’s Fifth Municipality, where a late model vehicle was found abandoned with California plates. Inside the vehicle police discovered the body of an executed male subject, reported a spokesperson of the Rosarito police. Click on or Google: More Americans shot in Mexico

The Laguna Journal reported that four people, three African Americans and a white woman, was found shot in the head.

According to a Mexican policemen at the scene said, “The discovery occurred at kilometer four of the boulevard, under the bridge known as El Morro, where they located a 2nd vehicle a green Cadillac with white California, USA plates.” The officer went on to say in broken English “At 20 meters’ from the car, we found dead another man of dark complexion and a white woman, who apparently are also foreigners”. Those bodies have not been identified.

Elements of ministerial personnel and expertise of the Attorney General de Justicia del Estado, working at the crime scene where they collected evidence of multiple homicides.

Last week four Americans were shot and wounded as they were leaving the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in the ProNaF tourist zone in the violent Mexican border city of Juárez.

Some 200 people have been killed in Tijuana so far this year. In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and just since the beginning of this year more than 3500 people have been murdered in Mexico in what authorities blame on the Mexican cartels and their criminal gangs and Para-military forces. Click on or Google Dangerous Mexican/U.S. Criminal

Enterprises Operating Along the Mexican border

It is estimated that Mexico has 36,000 troops fighting the Mexican drug cartels and their Para-military units throughout the country. With the expected injection of more soldiers being sent to the U.S. Mexican border cities those troops will number near 40,000.

Calderon is seeking U.S. military aid under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, a multiyear $1.4 billion anti-narcotics package proposed by President Bush. Click on or Google: Merida Initiative Will It Work?

In recent months and after Mexican president Caldron dispatched the Mexican army and federal police to many interior cities and to Mexican cities on the Mexican U.S. border the level of violence has risen substantially.

As reported earlier this month in the Laguna/El Paso Journal many Americans are wondering when the Bush administration is going to raise the travel alert to its highest level “travel warning,” to forewarn American travelers to Mexico? How many American citizens are going to have to be shot, executed or kidnapped before the American government move to prevent needless deaths and issue the proper high alert of “travel warning,” for Americans?

By Michael Webster: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. July 26, 2009 at 3:00 PM PDT

Authorities in Mexico claim they have arrested four men in relation to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Robert Rosas. Many U. S.  news outlets reported over the week end that U.S. authorities also arrested three people in connection with the Thursday killing of a Border Patrol agent in San Diego County were arrested at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose Friday the two men and a woman where discovered as authorities searched hospitals for a person or persons possibly wounded in the murder of agent Rosas.

The detainees in Mexico according to Mexican law enforcement are allegedly part of a drug and immigrant smuggling organization. More than 20 Mexican nationals were together with the suspects when police detained them. Mexican police report they seized weapons among this group near Tecate, Mexico, said Elias Alvarez Hernandez, coordinator of federal police in Baja California.

Whether it was illegal immigrants or drug smugglers is not immediately clear. What is certain is Border Agent Robert Wimer Rosas, was killed in the line of duty by unidentified individuals at 9:15 PM on July 23rd while on duty patrolling the U.S. Mexican border.

At the news conference held Saturday Mexico police did not say what evidence if any they had against the four, identified as Jose Quintero Ruiz, 43, and his brother Jose Eugenio Quintero Ruiz, 49, and taxi drivers Jose Alfredo Camacho, 34 and Antonio Valladares, 57.

Agent Robert Rosas was killed Thursday while responding alone to a suspected border incursion near Campo, a town in rugged, arid terrain in southeastern San Diego County. He was shot in the head and body and was dead when other agents arrived, said Keith Slotter, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego bureau.

Federal police reported one of the four suspects told police that a man detained Friday with a handgun had shot Rosas. Tecate police said Friday they had arrested 36-year-old Ernesto Parra Valenzuela near the crime scene with a Border Patrol-issued weapon after the shooting.

FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth told The Associated Press in an e-mail late Saturday that he could not confirm or comment on any arrest reports.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that agent Rosas was shot in the head.

U.S. investigators said blood evidence at the scene indicated at least one culprit and possibly others had serious injuries, possible wounded by Rosas.

Warning alerts by American officials have expressed concerns that the drug cartel battles plaguing Mexico could spill into the United States with the targeting of U.S. law enforcement.

Investigators aren’t ruling out the possibility that Rosas was slain by drug smugglers, human smugglers or even terrorist.

Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, said Mexican law enforcement agencies are cooperating in the case.

“This is a tragic example of the violence we keep facing at our common border as President (Felipe) Calderon continues to roll back transnational organized crime, and underscores the need for both our countries to keep working as full partners to guarantee the safety and security of those living on both sides of our border communities,” Sarukhan said in a written statement Saturday.

Rosas was the first Border Patrol agent to die in a shooting in more than a decade, according to The Officer Down Memorial Page Inc., which tracks fallen officers using information provided by law enforcement agencies. Another agent, Luis Aguilar, was intentionally run over by a fleeing man driving a drug-laden Hummer in January 2008.

Rosas, a three-year Border Patrol veteran, had a 2-year-old son and an 11-month-old daughter, said Richard Barlow, acting chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector.

Authorities could not confirm reports that he called for backup and then went ahead before anyone arrived, but said it isn’t unusual for agents to work alone along the border.

Since 1919, 108 Border Patrol agents have died on duty, according to The Officer Down Memorial Page. Gunfire was the leading cause with 30 deaths, followed by automobile accidents and aircraft accidents.

The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, told the AP “I am deeply saddened by the tragic death of one of our own,” Napolitano said in the statement.

Rep. Darrell Issa issued a statement Friday about Rosa’s slaying.

“What happened last night was a tragedy and a painful acknowledgment that at any time, our Border Patrol agents may be put into an extraordinary circumstance,” Issa said. “The thoughts and prayers of our entire region are with the family and friends of this fallen agent.”

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) warned that Rosas’ killing was a wake-up call and another example of how the violence related to illegal aliens and drugs crossed over the border along with the smugglers

The Minutemen group reported that the shooting incident occurred on U.S. territory about 100 feet north of the border after several agents responded to a call from a minuteman scout/ observer that four persons had trespassed over the border in front of his outpost at about 8:45 pm last night. The outpost is located at the border in Campo, Ca., about 60 miles east of San Diego.

The minuteman scout, a member of the Campo Minutemen organization, told Minuteman Project president Jim Gilchrist that within minutes of his call about a half dozen agents responded and approached the intruders on foot. A foot chase ensued whereupon one of the intruders opened fire on Agent Rosas. He died at the scene from a gunshot wound to the head. The shooter and his accomplices are believed to have fled back into Mexico.

Sources:

Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the United States

Associated Press / NBC TV Bay Area

The Officer Down Memorial Page

San Diego County Sheriff’s Department

ICE

FBI

Tecate Police Dept.

Elias Alvarez Hernandez, coordinator of federal police in Baja California.

Mexican Federal Police

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