mexico

Newspaper vendor killed for threatening drug gang's power

MEXICO CITY (AP):

A drug gunman shot to death a woman who distributed newspapers in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez because his gang thought she threatened their control over street vendors, federal police said yesterday.

Monday's killing revealed some of the grittier aspects of one of the world's most violent cities, where about 6,000 drug-related murders were committed in 2009 and 2010.

Victim Maribel Hernandez worked as a distributor for the Diario de Juarez and PM newspapers. She had influence over which vendors got to sell the papers, and the La Linea gang, allied with the Juarez drug cartel, thought she was discriminating against paper vendors who paid protection money to their cartel, police said in a statement.

Local officials have said such street vendors sometimes also sell small quantities of drugs.

Suspect detained

Federal police said that they had detained a suspect in the killing, who told them he was paid 3,000 pesos (US$250) to do the job.

Also yesterday, federal police reported they had captured a leading enforcer for the Independent Cartel of Acapulco in the Pacific coast resort city of the same name. The enforcer allegedly took part in last year's kidnap-killing of 20 vacationers from the western state of Michoacan and in the killing and beheading of 14 men in Acapulco in early January.