Authorities in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez are claiming that various drug gangs in the city planned a Halloween day killing spree to get the city’s murders to more than 100 for the month of October.
This week, the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office revealed that they obtained communications between members of various drug gangs where they plotted to carry out several murders on Halloween Day to raise the murder statistics for Juarez to more than 100, El Diario de Juarez reported, citing government sources. Ciudad Juarez is immediately south of El Paso, Texas, and has historically been a hub of cartel activity, with several criminal organizations having a presence there. These include the Juarez Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, and Cartel Jalisco New Generation, among others.
The claim is based on a series of messages between drug gang bosses that law enforcement managed to intercept. The report does not detail which drug cartels or gangs the messages were between. However, Ciudad Juarez has a long history of cartel violence. Most recently, the violence in Juarez is tied to fights over the control of not only the drug markets but also the human smuggling market and extortion operations.
In response to the intelligence, law enforcement officials reached out to the Mexican military, and they increased the intensity of police patrols virtually flooding the streets with cops to dissuade more killings.
On Halloween day, cartel gunmen managed to kill three people in the morning and six in the afternoon, El Diario de Juarez reported. The murder statistics showed 94 killings for the month, making October the fourth deadliest. Despite the high figure, cartel leaders did not surpass the 100-murder marker that authorities claim the criminals were looking to break.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.