Three Tucson, Arizona Girls Escape Years-Long Captivity in Their Home

Three sisters, aged 12, 13 and 17 escaped captivity in their Tucson, Arizona home last week, ending every child’s nightmare.  The girls were held captive in separate rooms in a home for years, fed once per day, and not allowed to bathe or see each other.  Their step-father and mother are charged with kidnapping, abuse, and the step-father, with sexual abuse. Echoing the Ariel Castro crimes, neighbors said they had no idea any children lived next door.

The younger girls escaped to the neighbors’ house and called police who immediately investigated, found the 17year-old and arrested the parents.

Little else is known in the story now, aside from how horrific it was. 

Link to story and pictures of the residence: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/girls-freed-tucson-az-home-years-held-captive-cops-article-1.1530540

San Antonio Restaurant Steals Wages From 60 Undocumented Workers, Including Own Relatives

Yolanda Henandez de Arteaga, a restaurant in a la Vernia, outside San Antonio has been charged in federal court with wire fraud for stealing the wages of sixty undocumented restaurant workers, including a dozen of her own family members, by promising them official immigration paperwork.  In all, she got $89,600 from the workers.

That’s pretty low.  Apparently she thought they wouldn’t complain to authorities because they’re undocumented.  She was wrong.  The FBI found corroborating records at Western Union and Money Gram and her own restaurant verified the workers’ claims, with a ledgerof the names of he victims, the amounts they owed, and the birth certificates and travel documents of the victims.

Stealing from the weak is low. Stealing from your family is lower. Running an elaborate hoax on the promise of a better life your own poor, hardworking, undocumented workers by stealing their paychecks is close to modern day peonage. 

She’s facing 30 years in prison for wire fraud.  I hope she gets all of it.

Story credit www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Restaurant-owner-accused-of-duping-employees-out-5017972.php

Former Teenage Cartel Hitman Returns To US/San Antonio

A former teenage cartel hitman, who admitted to killing four people while employed by the former Beltran-Leyva Cartel in southern Mexico has finished a three-year juvenile sentence in Mexico (the maximum allowed for juveniles under Mexican law) and has returned to the US, where he is a citizen.  The now-17 year-old was reunited with family members in San Antonio.  The Houston Chronicle

Reports that it is unclear whether he faces charges in the US.  The young man Edgar, Jimenez Lugo was trying to flee Mexico in 2010 when he was caught and admitted to killing four people whose beheaded bodies were found in Morelos hanging from a bridge. The young man claimed that he was forced into the cartel by drug traffickers when he was 11 and participated in the killings when drugged and under threat.

He was born in San Diego but raised in Mexico by a grandmother. 

The interior secretary of Morelos State said it wasn’t clear if the young man had been rehabilitated because his crimes were so severe.  He’s being taken to a residential support facility in San Antonio.

We’ve posted before on the serious issue of teenage cartel hitmen on the US border committing crimes in the US.  The post, and the article it quotes are worth reading again.  This is an unusual story of a former hitman coming back after serving a sentence for a crime he committed while so young.  Hopefully this young man’s story is true, that he was forced into the gang.  And hopefully he can be rehabilitated, like teenage soldiers in the west African civil wars have been.  (See memoir by Ishmael Beah).

 He obviously needs lots of help.  And the drug war that bred the type of violence he was forced or drawn into needs to come to an end, either forcibly as the Mexican government is doing by killing the leaders of the Beltran-Leyva cartel that used to employ him, or with more sensible drug enforcement policies on this side of the border.

Full article and picture credit: http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Teen-cartel-killer-released-in-Mexico-goes-to-US-5013310.php?cmpid=hpbn