Paulina Baeza
Posted on 09/24/2005 1:34:44 PM PDT by wagglebee
Mexican police officers have been charged in the death of a California woman in a Baja jail cell.
An investigation by the Spanish-language sister station of KSND-TV in San Diego also revealed three others will face charges tied to conspiracy to cover up the death of Paulina Baeza, 20, a college student in Irvine, Calif.
Baeza was arrested Aug. 9 by police in Ensenada, Mexico, about 60 miles south of San Diego.
Liza Davis, a representative of the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, told the TV station police received two reports that she had been behaving in an aggressive, disoriented manner in public.
A surveillance video from inside the jail shows Baeza being carried and dragged by officers a short time before she was reported dead, KSND reported.
An officer can be seen grabbing Baeza by her hair in the video. Another one is shown laughing, and one office appears to draw his finger across his throat, then dances as the girl is hauled away, the TV station said.
Davis said an autopsy by Mexican authorities showed Baeza later died of blunt force trauma that caused a brain hemorrhage. Her remains have been repatriated to family members in California.
A security videotape obtained by Mexican authorities shows Baeza was held in the air as authorities tried to subdue her then was dropped and hit her head.
Baeza's father, Pablo Baeza, calling his daughter's treatment aggressive and abusive, welcomed news of the charges.
The Orange County Register reported Baeza's Chevy Blazer had been impounded after the vehicle was ticketed for blocking a driveway.
Baeza, according to Mexican police, was arrested for trespassing when she climbed into a Chevy Blazer that was not hers, reported the paper.
The woman's mother, Carmen, told the Register her daughter suffered from bipolar disorder and had not been taking medication for nearly 60 days before her trip to Mexico.
She said her daughter had no history of violence but had become verbally abusive when not taking her medication.
As if I needed another reason to never step foot into Mexico. My in laws winter in Brownsville and take trips into Mexico all the time for up to 30 days. They are nuts.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are the monsters for whom thhe current Administration wants to leave the borders open.
God help us all.
And we'll see if this makes "THE NEWS".
Kind of makes Abu Graib not such a big deal, doesn't it? I wonder if CNN will fan this into flames. No, it's only OUR country which ever mistreats prisoners ??? Not by a long shot.
Disgusted ping.
Bookmark
"As if I needed another reason to never step foot into Mexico. My in laws winter in Brownsville and take trips into Mexico all the time for up to 30 days. They are nuts."
...
True but the same can be said of any foreignor(or even American) vacationing in (some city) America and unknowingly venturing into bad, dangerous neighborhoods.
It all depends on where one goes in any country. There are safe places and notoriously dangerous turfs like Tiajuana. Border towns should be warned as not safe, off limits to vacationers.
Oh come on now. It's been along time since any authorities in this country behaved like that. Yes there are bad neighborhoods, but once you are in the custofy of the cops you're supposed to be in safe hands.
No problem returning the dead bodies of those killed, but when their people enter our country illegally, kill our cops and citizens and flee back to the safety of Mexico, it's hands off.
How many stories of this will be on the NYTimes front page?
Oops, only Americans abuse prisoners.
"Oh come on now. It's been along time since any authorities in this country behaved like that."
...
oh come on your flame baiting self , I wasn't referring to the mexican police in THIS CASE. I was referring to certain dangerous areas globally.
Ensenada isn't exactly the black hole of Calcutta, but a number of Americans have been arrested and imprisoned there on very shakey grounds. If this woman had any credit cards, how much you want to bet there was heavy use of them after she was arrested?
"I know there are bad sections of town, but I absolutely, unequivocally do not trust the Mexican authorities"
...
I know most Americans know this. Unfortunetly that young woman who was bipolar and off her meds made the wrong choice to travel there and meet her fate.
"arrested and imprisoned there on very shakey grounds"
...
I think any person who is viewed as upwardly financially mobile, American, etc. is on shakey grounds the minute they set foot in any 3rd world country.
I noticed many religious missionaries who venture abroad to third world countries dress way down and even allow their own teeth to worsen so as not to appear to appealing money wise. IMO Safe and Smart move.
I don't condone what happened, but she was walking into a self-imposed land mine. Trying to keep your nose clean is just elementary good citizenship.
Unless you are a card carrying member of the communist party, it is a bad idea to show any disrespect towards the police in this country.
The Mexican police are brave.(sarcasm)
A couple of weeks ago a Marine recruiter was murdered over in Juarez.
Violence on the border is out of hand. It seems the violent turds of Mexico have risen to the top of the border.
The Mexican police are corrupt along with their politicians and leaders.
Agreed
This woman had Dilantin and I think Orinase, neither a controled substance. The police used her credit cards immediately after arresting her. She is out now.
---Who will fight for Dawn Marie Wilson?
For a while this week, it appeared her long and terrifying ordeal might be over. It seemed almost certain the 49-year-old San Diego woman sentenced to five years in a Mexican prison for carrying prescription drugs would finally win her freedom.
She did not.
In a stunning development, a Mexican appeals court rejected her challenge - her last stop in that country's judicial system, effectively sealing her five-year prison term.
So I ask now: How can we abandon this woman, this sea-loving adventurer caught up in an international nightmare? How can we let most of our elected officials ignore the plight of a U.S. citizen and California native, locked in a filthy federal prison in Ensenada with a broken hand and a withering spirit?
Who will get to work and get this woman home?
"Five years for this is just ridiculous, especially in a foreign country," said U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, the sole elected official who has personally gotten involved in the case and tried to help Wilson, who doesn't even live in his district. "Our government ought to be there arguing for her.
"It's just unacceptable our own citizens are not getting that kind of advocacy."
Wilson was arrested in April 2003 after Mexican police happened to stop her as she walked along a road in Ensenada following a minor traffic accident. Wilson, who had been living on a boat in Mexico with her fiance, Terry Kennedy, was carrying a three-month supply of Dilantin to control her seizures, she and Kennedy have steadfastly maintained.
Though she had a U.S. prescription, she stocked up on the Mexican version of the drug at a Tijuana pharmacy because it was much cheaper - and she would be adequately supplied for the weeks at sea aboard the couple's 45-foot trimaran.
Mistake.
When police stopped her, they also found three bottles of diabetes medication she had agreed to deliver to her ex-husband. She was not carrying any prescriptions.
What followed is a dizzying account of corrupt police, stolen credit cards, a Mexican lawyer who appeared to put on no defense and a so-called confession written in Spanish she says she was coerced into signing after being told it was for her release.
The bottom line: A woman who never had a single previous brush with the law was slapped with a five-year federal prison term for illegal possession of drugs. According to her new lawyer, her crime was in carrying a large supply without a Mexican doctor's prescription.
Dawn Wilson is apparently being made "an example," as some Mexican jurisdictions crack down on Americans and other foreigners who travel into the country to buy cheap prescription drugs.
The U.S. State Department has strongly warned against this, saying in an advisory that "Mexican public health laws concerning controlled medication are unclear and often enforced selectively."
But Kennedy felt sure the absurdity of locking up his "lady" for five years over anti-seizure medication would come through to the judges, and she would be set free. The hearing this week was, judicially anyway, her last chance for freedom. As of Friday, the ruling hadn't been finalized - "There still is a chance," her attorney wrote Kennedy - but the outlook is grim.
Kennedy is devastated.
"And all over what?" he said, his voice breaking. "She didn't try to assassinate President Fox. She had more prescription drugs than they say is allowed in Mexico. It's a joke, it's a damn sick joke.---
It is still pretty common in this country for mentally ill people to be shot by the police if they make any moves that can remotely be seen as threatening.
I wonder if they arrest our people on trumped up charges, because we ,occassionally, put hard core illegal alien criminals in prison.
Then again, they might do this even if we extended diplomatic immunity to all Mexicans living in this country.
Why would an American patronize that turd-world sewer?
Seal the border and let the cockroaches feast on each other.
Well of course. Anyone that goes down there does so at their own risk. I can't begin to tell you the nightmare stories of Americans that have paid a big price for their decision to venture down there.
"Yes there are bad neighborhoods, but once you are in the custofy of the cops you're supposed to be in safe hands."
Key word in your post is "supposed." The Federal Tranfer Facility here in OKC just got stuck with a $1.5 million judgement for allowing something much worse than this to happen to one of their prisoners. Autopsy photos showed bruising over much of his body, commesurate with his having been beaten to death. Trentadeau (spelling very uncertain) had a brother who is a lawyer, and has been riding their case like the devil for most of a decade, now.
I think the border towns should be used as places like Frenchman Flat and other areas in the Nevada Test Site.
I suggest the best way to handle the officers is to (censored). Must have seen too many Kung Fu flicks. 'Nuff said.
She used extremely poor judgment but that does not excuse the crapweasel Mexican JBTs who abused and killed her. Each of them should be ID'd and hunted down like the trash they are...
Comparing wanderings into bad neighborhoods to wanton abuse, torture and murder by the POLICE is a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
I see you've forgotten about the Notre Dame football player who took a beating from the Jacksonville police a few years ago. And he was a fairly high-profile white guy. If he had been poor and black it would never have made the paper.
Tut-tut! We're supposed to hold their culture as equal to our own! Can't go offending the monsters now. They're just murdering the youngsters we're too lazy to murder.
Because they buy into the Leftist claim that all cultures are equal and every nation is equal to our level of advancement. So the ignorant kiddies flock to Mexico thinking that, because they too hate the U.S., they'll all be buddy-buddy in the Mexican gulags.
Naturally, they get a real rude awakening when they find out they're the "stupid gringo" on the receiving end of a Mexican fist.
Thanks for providing a source other than wnd.
IMHO, any Americans going to Mexico and spending dollars there are only helping to support a regime that is invading us. I'm not saying this young woman deserved what she got, but I think that it's not only smart to avoid Mexico, but also our duty to do so.
I say America should put up a 30 foot wall topped with machine gun turrets... let Presidente Fox and the corrupt Mexican goons deal with their mess of a country.
That's my soapbox rant... please drive through.
It was big news for a while here in Orange County (CA). Your remarks are spot-on. I've decided to give Mexico zero dinero; they haven't earned it.
no machine guns....just minefields
If it was equal to our own there wouldn't be 20 million of them here. And that's just the illegals.
Both minefields and machineguns...minefields only can be easily defeated...best defense combines active and passive measures.
Note that I believe that an invasion is occurring, or at the very least, these intruders should be considered spies and hung.
just to educate a freeper, the proper word to use to describe that type of execution is not hung, it's "hanged."
That is an inappropriate remark.
This is not all that uncommon and generally comes about because the police have little training in dealing with the severely mentally ill. Sometimes untreated schizophrenics react inappropriately to the police. They may not obey commands to drop weapons or sharp objects because they are not interpreting the situation in the same way that sane people would. Likewise they may have picked up the weapons because they perceive extreme danger or evil that does not really exist. A person with proper training and experience can sometimes defuse this type of situation without violence. The availability of non-lethal weapons like tasers also helps.
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