Sías' Second in Command Executed

Martín Sías' Second In Command Executed

The man was shot point blank in the front doorway of his home.,

This article appeared in El Agora de Chihuahua a on August 6, 2008. This translation is rendered as closely as possible to the original wording. (See the orginal article here).

Ciudad Juárez - August 6, 2008: The Ministerial Police official known as José Vidal Barraza was executed with heavy caliber weapons. When he was in his house, hired assassins knocked on the door of his home and shot him when he opened the door.

The facts were recorded at 10p.m. at ''Article 32 Street'' and ''March 10th Street,'' resulting in the arrival of dozens of governmental ministry personnel.

It turns out that the executed officer was an agent of the Ministerial Police in Ciudad Juárez and son-in-law of the owner of the Rios Funeral Home.

It is worth noting that with this act there were three state agents executed, because on Tuesday afternoon two ministerial officers were executed in the town of Aldama.

It turns out that the executed man was a close collaborator of Commander Martín Sías, who has been threatened repeatedly with death.

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS STORY FROM REUTERS
(See the original story here)

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a senior police homicide investigator in Ciudad Juarez on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fourth policeman killed in the city this week, an attorney general's office said on Wednesday.

State police commander Vidal Barraza, who was investigating the 600 drug murders in Ciudad Juarez this year, was shot on Tuesday night as he stepped out of his house to meet a friend, the Chihuahua state attorney general's office said.

Barraza was appointed Chihuahua state murder investigator in July. He was barefoot and wearing only a pair of shorts when he was shot in his driveway.

"Witnesses told us they heard rounds of gunfire and then a few single shots," said the spokesman in the Mexican city across the border from El Paso, Texas. He declined to give more details.

Despite the deployment of 3,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez this year, the city has become Mexico's most violent front in a drug war that has killed 1,900 people nationwide in 2008.

Gun battles have erupted on busy city streets and buildings have been set on fire as Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, fights drug baron Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, boss of the Juarez cartel, for control of Ciudad Juarez and its lucrative smuggling corridor into the United States. (Reporting by Ignacio Alvarado, editing by Patricia Zengerle)