A group of cartel gunmen kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and mutilated the body of a state police officer in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas. After the gruesome murder, the gunmen left the body next to a posterboard with threats as part of an ongoing turf war for control of the central part of the state.
The gruesome killing was discovered on Thursday evening in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. Authorities arrived to find a mutilated body on the side of the road. At the scene, authorities were able to identify the victim as Luis Fernando Rodriguez Ramirez, an agent with the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office. Rodriguez Ramirez had been reported missing on January 10 — his fate remained unknown.
Credit: Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office
The body had been decapitated and castrated. At the scene, the hitmen left a banner with the message: “Keep playing at being drug traffickers, Victoria has an owner.”
Days before the bloody murder, hitmen attempted to kill 28-year-old Enrique Carmona Valdivia, a friend and alleged associate of Rodríguez. The attack took place while Carmona was driving his vehicle through the streets of Ciudad Victoria. After the attack, he went to a state police station seeking refuge.
Breitbart News Foundation / Cartel Chronicles
Police sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that the investigation indicates the murder is related to a struggle for control of local drug trafficking. Allegedly, Rodríguez was part of an independent drug trafficking group that included some corrupt police officers who had raided a safe house. Instead of delivering the drugs, Rodríguez and the group allegedly sold them, which put them at odds with the criminal organizations already operating in Ciudad Victoria. Currently, the Gulf Cartel and the Northeast Cartel faction of Los Zetas operate in the city and constantly clash for control. At the moment, the murder and the attack are attributed to the CDN (Cartel del Noreste).
Breitbart News Foundation / Cartel Chronicles
In a similar but unrelated case, authorities in Tamaulipas are also investigating the disappearance of Alan Josué Barrera Diaz, a 35-year-old former agent of the Attorney General’s Office. His disappearance was reported on January 6 in Reynosa, and his whereabouts have been unknown ever since.
Despite the Tamaulipas government’s attempts to downplay the violence in the state, cases of corruption involving members of the security forces collaborating with organized crime or establishing their own drug trafficking networks continue to raise concerns.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart News Foundation traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas, including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.C. Sanchez” from Tamaulipas.
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