Gunfight Part 2

Later that evening I placed calls into the Office of the District Attorney to let him know that I intended to travel into Mexico the next day. He advised me to mirandize both suspects before questioning them even though they were in Mexico, to satisfy the legal requirements of the U.S. I then called a friend in Customs who is of the adventurous sort and asked him to accompany me into Mexico to help me take custody of the prisoners, and to help me fight my way out in case the whole thing fell apart, which happens occasionally when dealing with any Mexican officials.

It has always been a crap shot when dealing with any officials in Mexico, it is always about money. It was always imperative for me to determine which of the drug cartels a particular law enforcement agency was working for at the time, before you dealt with them in any way. For instance the Chiuahua State Police, I knew were taking money from the Sanchez drug family, and I knew the Federales were working for the Sandoval drug family. This meant that I could "probably" trust the Chiuahua State Police, because they hated the Sandoval family which meant they were not cooperating with the Federales. In fact there had recently been a shooting between the two agencies in which many shots were fired, but no one was hit..... all over money.

Confusing I know! I also called and asked the Palomas Municipal Police Chief to have the two burglary suspects and the evidence seized by them prepared to be transported from Mexico to the U.S. as soon as possible the next morning. He agreed to do so, but he stated that he would have to transfer the suspects to the Chihuahua State Police, so that they could prepare and process the necessary paperwork to release the suspects to me. This made me very curious and a little apprehensive because the State Police Commandancia was located about five miles west of Palomas, and just a half mile south of the Border fence.

This meant that there was a real possibility that we could be ambushed either going to, or coming from the Commandancia. As I laid awake thinking of all of the possibilities that might happen the next day, suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I knew that we were going to be ambushed when we transported the prisoners to the Commandancia; and it would probably be in the most vulnerable location as we traveled on our route there.

Before dawn I was on the telephone to my Customs friend and I told him of my fears about possibly being ambushed while transporting the prisoners, I even gave him a chance to back out of going with me on this possible suicide run. True to his character he chose to go with me, stating the age old Grito, "I don't want to live forever." It is against the law for Americans to possess firearms in Mexico, that includes law enforcement. My Customs friend and I decided to carry a concealed pistol on our persons, both of us feeling that if we were armed we could possibly fight our way out, but unarmed we would certainly be assassinated by our enemies if attacked.

I have never relished spending even one day in a Mexicn prison, but the possibility of doing so was real if we were caught with the concealed weapons. My Customs friend met me at my office at about 7:00 that morning and we drove his unmarked Customs vehicle across the U.S./Mexican border into the wild bordertown of Palomas, Chuhuahua, Mexico. We were met at the Municipal jail by the Chief of Police and were taken to the location of our two prisoners. When we arrived the guards were in an uproar, earlier that morning someone had tried to assassinate our prisoners and had sprayed the entire jail with automatic rifle fire, not knowing where our prisoners were kept. No one was killed, but a guard was hit by bullet fragments and had been hospitalized. Our prisoners were frightened out of their wits, but were unharmed by the bullets fired into the prison.

For those of you unfamiliar with the jail system in Mexico, let me tell you that it is jail in the truest sense. The jail system only provides you with the barest of necessities. The jail in Palomas was a rectangulat shaped building about 100 feet long, by 12 feet wide. The two longest sides of the rectangle were iron bars the full 100 feet. Both barred sides being open to the elements. The rectangle was divided into about ten individual cells with thick adobe walls between each cell. The floor of each cell was bare concrete, there were no bunks, no water facilities, the bathroom facilities consisted of an old bucket, which when we arrived was full of excrement and the whole establishment had a vile smell about it.

It was a cold day, the temperature being about 35-36 degrees celsius and when I walked up to the bars of my suspect's cell I found them huddled together on a flattened card board box, with no blanket to cover them shivering so hard their teeth were chattering. They were both without shoes, their shoes had been stolen by the guards; but they still had their stockings. In Mexicn jail if you have no one to take care of you, family or friends outside of jail, you might very well starve to death. They usually serve a grule of dubious content once a day and many times you must pay the jailor to feed you that. I decided to let them know I was there, and so stated in a loud voice,"Hey, you boys wanta go home?"

Both of them shot up off the floor when they heard my voice. They both approached the cell door crying like little children and treating me like a long lost relative. This was amusing to me because the contact that I had had with them before this was just the opposite. They had gone from street tough bad boys, to crying, whimpering little children overnight, facing the fact that they might have to spend the rest of their lives in a larger jail with not more creature comforts than this one. Both of them bore visible signs of bruising to their faces and necks, probably administered by a rubber hose. They had not had any water or food for over twenty four hours.

The prevailing wind was blowing right through the cell bars at about ten miles an hour and their tongues were swollen and dehydrated to the point that they could barely talk. On top of all of this someone had tried to kill them a few hours earlier. The mean old cop had suddenly become their savior in every sense of the word. It was all I could do to keep both of them from trying to hug me through the jail bars, and it was hard to make out what they were saying through he blubbering and crying.

Both of them stated to me that they had done the burglary of the Aduana Officer's home and that they would sign any confession as long as I got them out of jail and out of Mexico. We waited anxiously for about thirty minutes for the State Police to arrive, on constant watch that no one from the cartels were able to sneak up and finish the job they had attempted when they tried to kill the two earlier.

We then formed a convoy of three vehicles, a State Police vehicle in front, the Customs Suburban with the prisoners and us in the middle and a State Police vehicle in the rear with the intent of convoying the prisoners to the State Police Comandancia.