Seven municipal police officers in the border state of Nuevo Leon face kidnapping charges over their alleged roles in taking victims on behalf of a cartel led by one of the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitives.
The case took place this week when detectives with the Nuevo Leon State Investigations Agency (AEI) raided the San Pedro Municipal Police headquarters and arrested seven officers. They were identified as Cristina Guadalupe N., Jorge Alberto N., Urias Jahaziel N., Luis Antonio N., Jesus Eduardo N., Oziel Alejandro N., and Oscar Eduardo N. Mexican law restricts the release of surnames for those accused of criminal violations.
San Pedro is a wealthy suburb near Monterrey and is where most U.S. Consulate employees are assigned to live. The case began on July 22, when an unnamed citizen called the police department to report damages to his home, information released by the AEI revealed.
The seven officers responded to the house and allegedly kidnapped him for several hours before turning him over to gunmen working for an independent cartel led by Jose Rodolfo “El Gato” Villarreal Hernandez. The crime boss listed by the FBI as a Most Wanted fugitive for a 2013 cartel hit in the Dallas area. El Gato’s gunmen forced the victim’s family to pay $2 million pesos ($100,000 USD).
Upon learning of the kidnapping, the AEI worked to track the kidnapping suspects and with the help of San Pedro Police.
Gerald “Tony” Aranda is an international journalist with more than 20 years of experience working in high-risk areas for print and broadcast news outlets investigating organized crime, corruption, and drug trafficking in the U.S. and Mexico. In 2016, Gerald took up the pseudonym of “Tony” when he joined Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project. Since then, he has come out of the shadows and become a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.