New Mexico official denied bail on gun-running charges
A trustee of a New Mexico border village will remain behind bars with the mayor and police chief pending trial on charges they ran guns to warring drug cartels in Mexico, a judge ruled on Tuesday.
District Judge Robert C. Brack denied bail for Blas Gutierrez at a hearing in Las Cruces, calling the former trustee of Columbus a dangerous flight risk who had abused his public trust “to fuel the war that’s going on south of the border” in Mexico.
Gutierrez was among 13 people, including the mayor and police chief of the tiny frontier town, charged last month in an 84-count gun-running indictment.
It alleged that the defendants used their positions to facilitate and safeguard the trafficking of around 200 guns, including assault rifles, to Mexico, where about 40 people a day were killed in raging drug cartel violence last year.