4 U.S. Citizens Found Strangled in Tijuana Mexico
May 14, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday. The bodies were described as having been tortured; bludgeoned, beaten and with their skulls crushed. They were found wrapped in blankets early Saturday morning, according to a news release from the Tijuana State Attorney’s Office.
The victims were found Saturday, but their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, said Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California.
U.S. consular officials in Tijuana said the victims two men and two women from the San Diego and Chula Vista areas — were U.S. citizens. The state attorney general’s office in Baja, Calif., said one of the women was Mexican.
A spokesman for the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana confirmed the identities of the dead as Luis Games Chavez, 21; Oscar J. Garcia III, 23; Brianna Hernandez Aguilera, 19; and Carmen Ramos Chavez, 20. All were U.S. citizens and Southern California residents, the consulate spokesman said. He declined to give specific hometowns or say how long the four had been in Tijuana.
Their deaths are the latest in a string of violence in Tijuana that authorities blame on a bloody turf war between drug cartels.
“I just don’t think kids should be going to Tijuana right now,” Chula Vista police Lt. Scott Arsenault told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “They ran into the wrong people, obviously.”
Bernard Gonzales, a spokesman for the Chula Vista Police Department, said a friend told the women’s parents they were headed to nightclubs in Tijuana on Thursday night. They were reported missing the next day when they did not answer their cell phones.
