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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Five killed in gunbattle on Acapulco's main shore road |
| 2010-04-16 |
| A gunbattle erupted on the main coast boulevard in the heart of this Pacific resort Wednesday afternoon, killing six people, including a mother and her 8-year-old child. None of the victims appeared to be tourists. One federal police officer died in a shootout with gunmen, but at least three of the dead seemed to have been bystanders caught in the crossfire. Five other people suffered wounds and about a dozen vehicles were riddled with bullets. Federal police said they detained a 26-year-old and said he apparently worked for Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a U.S.-born drug capo who has been engaged in a bloody battle in the Acapulco area with former colleagues in the Beltran-Leyva drug cartel. Police said the gunbattle started when "armed men traveling in several vehicles opened fire on the occupants of another vehicle," killing both men. It was unclear why the men were targeted. Drug gangs have staged shootouts in Acapulco before, but seldom in broad daylight amid heavy traffic, and never with such a toll among bystanders. Police tried to intercept the gunmen's vehicles. "In their attempt to escape, the assailants opened fire on several private vehicles, killing three people, including a child," federal police said in a statement. While police officers may have tried to return fire, the area was littered with hundreds of shell casings from AK-47 assault rifles -- a weapon used almost exclusively by Mexico's drug cartels. The battle caused a huge traffic jam on the busy Miguel Aleman Boulevard, after some drivers crashed into each other and others tried to cross the palm-lined median strip in a desperate attempt to flee the shooting. "An 8-year-old girl died when she was being transferred in an ambulance, and her mother also died," city police said in a statement. A policeman at the scene said the mother had apparently just picked her daughter up from school when they were caught in the hail of bullets. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #8 I seem to recall that the actual statistic was that 90% of those guns that the the Mexican police could trace were from north of the border. But that almost all the guns were untraceable. Which puts rather a different complexion on things, I think. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-04-16 22:05 |
| #7 Failing state alert. If you like our insane policy of importing a desperate underclass from Mexico now, just wait until most major cities in Mexico become no-go zones for the feds. Then we can add millions of desperately poor and terrified urban Mexicans to the 10m+ desperately poor rural Mexicans already here. Yet another colossal failure of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. 'dum gets a lock on cheap labor for its sweatshop owner supporters, and 'dee gets a lock on the latino vote in CA and "emerging majority" battleground states in the mountain SW. This is political decadence. Pox on both etc |
| Posted by: lex 2010-04-16 18:38 |
| #6 Glenmmore, I sensed it. I was just trying to provide some statistics to counter conventional thought. I get tired of hearing that 90% of the firearms going into Mexico come from the U.S.--particularly when it comes from people who know differently. The military and police are the only legal buyers of firearms in Mexico so one would think that any firearms ending up in cartel hands are purchased illegally or come through the police and military. Semi-autos can be converted to fully auto with not too much difficulty particularly for someone familiar with military weapons. Los Zetas is such a group (former military). Breaking the law in Mexico seems to be an oxymoron so such conversions wouldn't be of much concern to the person doing the converting. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-04-16 11:57 |
| #5 But Michelle Obama says traveling to Mexico is safe! |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2010-04-16 11:31 |
| #4 JohnQC, I know that - was just being sarcastic. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2010-04-16 10:28 |
| #3 Glenmore, I don't think you can trust statistics regarding gun flow into Mexico. A statistic often cited is that 90% of the firearms going into Mexico come from the U.S. This may not be true because it is often used to justify U.S. Federal budgets related to the war on drugs such as ATF, DEA, etc. Moreover, this figure is used by "gun control" zealots with an agenda. Fox News estimated that 17% of the guns that flow into Mexico are from the U.S. If this is true 83% come from other places besides the U.S. Gun tracing in Mexico is a little murky. The following link is interesting and seems fairly unbiased: Guns into Mexico |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-04-16 10:19 |
| #2 after some drivers crashed into each other Can anyone say the word.... B L O C K E R S ? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-04-16 08:01 |
| #1 hundreds of shell casings from AK-47 That's a lot of trigger pulling in a semi-automatic during a short gun battle, and fully automatic AK-47s are not available at the US gun shows that provide most of the weapons to Mexico, so these must have been semi-auto AKs. Right? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2010-04-16 07:53 |