Four homicide victims were discovered on Monday in the once peaceful tourist city of Ensenada, Baja California.
The latest murders put the total for the month of April at 27, surpassing the previous high this year at 25 registered in January, according to Ensenada.
According to local media, the first discovery on Monday was reported at 1:09 pm when an anonymous caller reported a possible dead body in colonia Oaxaca. Police discovered an unidentified 45 to 50-year-old male in a small stream. The victim’s hands were bound together and he displayed signs of trauma.
The second report was received at 6:10 pm by caller who notified 911 of a dead female at a construction site in colonia Benito Garcia. Police found an unidentified woman on the floor of an uncompleted structure. According to the state prosecutor’s office, the victim’s hands and feet were restrained with obvious signs of trauma. Her age was believed to be approximately 35.
While investigators were at the construction site, they received a report of a male victim in the same colonia, Benito Garcia, a short distance away. When police arrived, they discovered a male murder victim with multiple gunshot wounds lying in the street of a residential area. Investigators had very little information except that gunshots were reportedly heard by witnesses.
At approximately 11 pm, police received the fourth call also in colonia Benito Garcia regarding a murder victim in the roadway. Authorities later discovered the victim deceased from gunshot wounds.
Between April 18 and 19, at least five people were killed by gunfire with two more wounded in Ensenada, according to Debate.
At the current time, Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and remnants of the Cártel Arellano Félix are aligned in their fight against warring factions of the Sinaloa Cartel’s Los Aquiles and “Los Uriarte,” as previously reported by Breitbart Texas.
The popular tourist city is experiencing a dramatic increase in cartel-related violence as rivals fight for the lucrative street-level drug market and valuable smuggling routes into the United States. The spike in homicides in Ensenada rose from 48 reported murders in 2015; 68 in 2016; and 294 in 2017.
Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.) You can follow him on Twitter. He can be reached at robertrarce@gmail.com