Teenagers shoot it out with Mexican police
A gang of teenagers, most 15-years-old, were detained after a running shootout with officers in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, officials said Wednesday, part of a trend of ever-younger drug suspects.
Police found packages containing 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of marijuana and a .45 caliber pistol in the pickup truck the youths were traveling in.
The five teenagers - three 15-year-olds and two aged 17 - were speeding and tried to escape, pumping several rounds into a police car and leading police on a chase for several blocks in Ciudad Juarez before they were caught, federal police said in a statement. Their names were not released because of their ages.
The government has increasingly detained youths under 18 for drug-related crimes. Last month, authorities arrested a 14-year-old boy who they alleged worked as an assassin for a drug gang in central Mexico.
And in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, police reported that two men dressed up in clown costumes had been found executed in the city of Cardenas, Tabasco.
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And in the Caribbean resort city of Cancun, authorities reported Wednesday that five inmates - including a Colombian man sentenced to more than 20 years for smuggling a ton of cocaine into Mexico aboard a boat - had escaped.
The inmates’ representatives had apparently presented false release orders to guards on New Year’s Eve.
Prison director Jorge Mendoza Arguelles said the escape is being investigated, adding that “there was collusion among authorities, both in the court and apparently in the judicial office of the jail,” because the release orders were obviously falsified.
And in the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco, police reported Wednesday they had found the bodies of three men tossed into a sewer. State police said the victims had been shot in the head and in the chest.