U.S. teen sentenced in Mexico to two years in prison for police officer killings
A judge sentenced a U.S. teenager Wednesday to two years in prison for being an accomplice in the June killings of two traffic officers in this border city.
Bryan Torres, a 17-year-old boy from El Paso, Texas, was found guilty of stealing some of the officers’ belongings and of helping his 19-year-old friend Daygoro Rivera move the bodies.
Torres has maintained he was sleeping when the officers were shot.
Rivera confessed to killing the officers because he didn’t have money to pay a bribe to the officers so they wouldn’t tow his car after a traffic violation.
On June 19, Rivera was pulled over for running a stop sign and was followed home by the officers so he could retrieve money for a bribe, according to his confession included in court documents.
Rivera told police that he approached Torres, who was staying at his home, and asked him for money. When neither had enough money to pay the bribe, Rivera took a gun from the house, went outside and shot the officers, according to his statement. Rivera is being held on murder charges.
Source: signonsandiego.com
Man Who Ran To Mexico With L.I. Teen Pleads Guilty To Sex Charges
A convicted sex offender who ran off to Mexico with a 16-year-old Long Island girl has pleaded guilty to third-degree rape and sodomy.
Lester Joy, 25, of Morristown, N.J., said he met the girl on the Internet and went to her house in Hampton Bays on Jan. 31, 2005.
He said he and the girl climbed out of the window and fled to Mexico.
The case was first reported as a missing teenager case, but the girl called home from Mexico two weeks later and said she wanted to come
Accused Police Impersonator Arrested In Mexico
A San Antonio man who fled to Mexico after being convicted and sentenced on money laundering and wire fraud charges was arrested last week.
The Texas Attorney General's office said that Raymond D. Abreu Jr., 35, was arrested in Laredo on Sept. 21. after undercover officers lured Abreu to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he was told that $57,000 in extortion money was waiting for him.
Abreu fled the country four years ago after being sentenced to 33 months in federal prison for impersonating a San Antonio police officer and demanded bribes from operators of illegal eight-liner games.
He
Man who ran away to Mexico with teen admits sexual assault
A 44-year-old man who flew to Mexico with a 14-year-old family friend pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually assaulting the girl.
Under a plea agreement, Daniel Elliott, of West Deptford, faces a six-year prison term. In the deal, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact. If he had been convicted on all counts, he could have faced more than 26 years in prison.
The high school freshman's disappearance on Aug. 28, 2004, sparked an international search that ended Sept. 15 when
Collaborator of Mexico Drug Lord Sentenced
An alleged cohort of imprisoned drug lord Osiel Cardenas was sentenced Thursday to 44 years in prison on drug-related charges, authorities said.
Adan Javier Medrano was convicted of smuggling drug money from the United States into Mexico and distributing cocaine north of the border, the federal Attorney Generals Office said in a news release.
Medrano served as a gunman for Cardenas Gulf Cartel, which moved tons of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S., and was in charge of drug-related activites in Chiapas state and Guatemala, the release said.
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In Mexico's Murders, Fury Is Aimed at Officials
VÃctor Javier GarcÃa still has a dozen marks across his abdomen and genitals from the burning cigarettes the police used to torture him into falsely confessing to being a serial killer.
It made no difference to a lower court judge that the DNA tests on the bodies identified as his victims were not conclusive. Or that a forensics expert testified that he had been ordered by his superiors to plant false evidence. Or even that witnesses retracted their testimony, saying the police had threatened them into making false statements.
Mr. GarcÃa was sentenced to
Mexican police respond to protests after death in Mexico City women's prison
Dozens of riot police on Monday poured into a women's jail in eastern Mexico City to quell protests after an inmate died of an apparent heart attack.
Protesters at Santa Martha Acatitla prison hung burning clothes from the windows along with protest signs proclaiming "no more death" and "we are innocent."
There were no injuries in the protests following the death of one inmate from natural causes, said Pedro Aguilar, a spokesman for the city corrections department.
Prison officials met in the afternoon with inmate leaders to listen to grievances.
About 1,600 inmates,
Mexico axes death penalty
Mexico has outlawed its long-dormant death penalty, setting itself apart from its northern neighbour - the United States.
President Vicente Fox announced the decree, based on a constitutional change approved by the Mexican Senate in a 79-2 vote last March.
"Through the reform of our constitution, the ultimate penalty has been stricken from our laws," Fox said on Friday.
Mexico last executed a prisoner in 1961, but Mexico and the US have clashed repeatedly over the years over Mexicans sentenced to die by US courts.
In 2002, Fox cancelled a visit to US President George W.
Eight sent to asylum after horror exorcism killings in Mexico
A judge ordered eight adults committed to a prison psychiatric facility for 40 years on Thursday for the grisly exorcism slayings of a seven-month-old baby and a 13-year-old girl in a remote mountain community in western Mexico.
The brutality of the Dec. 7 killings -- the baby was hacked to death and dismembered while the teenager killed with stones -- has shocked Mexico. Officials say the killers were the victims' own parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, who had become convinced the girls were demons or possessed by the devil.
They carried out the
Violence breaks out in parts of Mexico
Assailants lobbed a grenade at a hotel and a prison director and police chief barely survived separate attempts on their lives in an outbreak of violence in several parts of Mexico.
The grenade attack happened early Saturday in the resort city of Zihuatanejo, 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Acapulco. The grenade exploded about 4 a.m. (1000 GMT) in the parking lot of the Hotel Posada Colonial, shattering windows and injuring a person who was hit in the leg by a fragment of the weapon, Preventive Police official Miguel Garcia said.
The incident marked the third
Police chase naked driver into Mexico
A naked man driving a Chevrolet S-10 pickup led police on a chase to the international border yesterday before leaving the truck and running into Mexico, where he was caught.
The man was first observed parked in an alleyand exposing himself about 12:15 p.m. near Texas Street in North Park. Responding officers tried to stop the truck, but the driver sped off, San Diego police Sgt. Jim Schorr said.
During a police chase, the driver avoided three spike strips set down on roadways by officers at various locations.
On Interstate 5 at Interstate 905, the man
