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HIDALGO — Police here rescued a kidnapping victim from the trunk of a car bound for Mexico Tuesday morning. Police are not releasing many details about the kidnapping because it is still under investigation and officers want to protect the victim from further danger, Captain Robert Vela of the Hidalgo Police Department said. A police officer stationed at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge was inspecting southbound traffic when he came across a driver who looked younger than the average licensed driver, investigators said. At least one patrolman is always on duty at the port of entry to secure the toll booths...

HIDALGO COUNTY - The sheriff says the shooting involving a Hidalgo County sheriff deputy has a cartel connection. Sheriff Lupe Trevino says Sunday’s shooting can be linked to the death of Samuel Borrego Torres, also known as “Metro Tres,” of the Gulf Cartel. Trevino says Daniel Gonzalez Perez from Rio Bravo, a known member of a gang called Partido Revolutionaro, is the man who opened fire on his deputies. The sheriff says this gang was contracted to find a lost load of marijuana for the Gulf Cartel when Metro Tres was killed. Hidalgo deputies rolled up on Perez and three...

NORTHEAST OF EDINBURG - An Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy was shot Sunday afternoon during a traffic stop. It happened near the intersection of Val Verde Road and FM 2812 northeast of Edinburg. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino told CHANNEL 5 NEWS a deputy responded to a call about a alleged kidnapping in the area. En route the deputy spotted a truck matching the suspects' description. "They pulled him over. Another deputy drove up and helped him. We did what's called a felony stop (because) we knew that there were suspects involved in that vehicle," Trevino explained. He said the deputies...

HIDALGO COUNTY - A suspected hitman wanted for murder and on the run for almost 4 years will be arriving in the Valley. Eduardo Leme de Oliveira was arrested in the Mexican state of Sonora last week. The Brazilian-native is the suspect in the shooting death of Juan Antonio Morales in October 2008. He reportedly committed the murder as a favor for the victim's wife and her reported lover. At first, Mexican authorities refused to release Oliveira saying he was a Mexican national. The only way Sheriff Lupe Trevino could bring him back to face the charges was to prove...

DONNA — U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested a member of Los Zetas drug cartel on Wednesday. CBP officers working southbound enforcement at the bridge encountered a blue GMC pickup truck as it attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. A man riding in the truck, identified as Mexican national Jose Eduardo Aleman Chavez, 36, was escorted to secondary inspection for further examination. A check of the man's name in national criminal databases revealed an arrest warrant for Aleman in Mexico from Interpol on organized crime and theft charges. Officers identified Aleman as a member of the Zetas...

HIDALGO COUNTY - Two men are on the run at this hour after they crashed through the international crossing at Anzalduas. It began as a traffic stop at about noon on Tuesday. Alamo police officers pulled over a SUV after the drivers were suspiciously driving around the Alamo Plaza parking lot. At first the men seemed to cooperate with the officer. At one point, the officer asked the passenger to exit the vehicle when he began fidgeting. Sgt. Lupita Valdez says the driver had a Georgia license. The passenger had a Reynosa drivers license and local identification. All their documents...

PALMVIEW -- A "Trespassers Will Be Shot" sign stood in the front lawn of a residence here where Hidalgo County Sheriff's deputies worked late Monday night to investigate an alleged gun battle. Sheriff Lupe Trevino confirmed investigators were now trying to link reports of several shots fired in the neighborhood at around 9:20 p.m. Monday to an unidentified shooting victim dropped off at Mission Regional Medical Center soon after. A resident at a home on the Farmosa Avenue cul-de-sac in Palmview told deputies he used his own assault rifle to defend himself after noticing several armed and masked men approaching...

NEAR MISSION -- Hidalgo County Sheriff's deputies are keeping watch at McAllen Medical Center until a suspect in an attempted kidnapping case recovers from surgery for two gunshot wounds. A 49-year-old man north of Mission told authorities he shot at least one of three men who allegedly tried to kidnap him outside of his home Monday night. But when the unidentified suspect arrived at the hospital not long after that incident, he told authorities two children shot him near 29th Street and Nolana Road in McAllen. The Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office reported the McAllen Police Department recorded no such event...

WESLACO - Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies are looking for a man who disappeared after several suspects forced their way into his home. Investigators say several men forced their way into Angel Dominguez's home near Weslaco Wednesday night. Deputies say Dominguez grabbed a gun and started shooting at the men. The suspects fired back before fleeing from the scene. According the Dominguez wife the 26-year-old went after the men, but never came back and hasn't been seen since. Investigators say while they were at the home they found evidence that large loads of marijuana were being stored there. They also found...

EDINBURG — Six people accused of a February drug-related slaying faced capital murder charges Thursday morning. The sextet of suspects are allegedly part of a local drug smuggling group that ordered a hit of one of their own after he allegedly stole a load of marijuana delivered to a customer in February, investigators said. Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies found Gilberto Aguilar beaten and shot to death on Feb. 6 in a remote field north of Palmview. Investigators believe Aguilar was kidnapped, beaten with brass knuckles and fatally shot after he stole a load of marijuana. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño...

SAN JUAN —Police reunited a teenage woman with her family Monday afternoon, nearly 19 hours after she was abducted, blindfolded and dumped in a Reynosa field. The 18-year-old woman, whose name was not disclosed by police, was walking to a friend’s house about 6:30 p.m. Sunday. A black van pulled up alongside her and three men hopped out, San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez said. They snatched the girl, blindfolded her and took her to Reynosa. The kidnappers began calling the woman’s family demanding ransom money. “The kidnappers somehow missed it that she had a cell phone,” Gonzalez said. “We...

MCALLEN - A former Hidalgo County commissioner was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Sylvia Handy has until August 20 to surrender to U.S. Marshals. She pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to harbor aliens and to filing an incorrect tax return. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa said he will advise that she be placed in a facility close to her family, where she can get medical attention for a heart condition. He allowed a tearful Handy to make a statement before she was sentenced. She said she was sorry for what she did and repeatedly asked the judge for...

McALLEN — Sylvia Handy has maintained since her arrest last year that she never violated the trust of the voters who elected her to office. And despite pleading guilty to felony tax fraud and conspiracy charges, she is expected to resign her office today standing by that declaration. More on Slyvia Handy During a court hearing Monday heavy on semantics, the four-term county commissioner managed to admit to a federal judge that she lied on her taxes and put an undocumented immigrant on the county payroll while at the same time insisting that she never knowingly did anything wrong. She...

NEAR ALTON — A drunken dispute over a small debt led to a Mexican national's fatal shooting Saturday, authorities said. Two Mexican nationals have been arrested in connection to the crime. The duo was charged with murder at an arraignment Monday afternoon. Deputies responded to a call of a man's body that lay in a ditch about 4 p.m. Saturday near the intersection of 10 Mile Line and Texan roads, according to a Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office statement. Authorities identified the body as David Bello Crisolis, an illegal immigrant from Veracruz, Ver., Mexico. His age is unknown. Deputies said Crisolis...

U.S. Highway 281 Presentation >> Priority 1: Spend $75 million to build five overpasses in Falfurrias.>> Priority 2: A $13 million Ben Bolt overpass at Farm-to-Market Road 2508 is proposed to create a safer school zone and eliminate another traffic barrier.>> Priority 3: Dedicate anywhere from $40 million to $104 million to build tolled relief route around Premont or upgrade the existing route with tolled freeway lanes.>> Priority 4: A $50 million project in George West to build connectors to U.S. Highway 59 and Interstate 37.McALLEN -- Whether the route is eventually called Interstate 69 or the Trans-Texas Corridor, four...

McALLEN -- State senators on Tuesday ordered transportation officials to assess Texas' highway system and prioritize which regions are most in need of new roads. "We're expecting a full report, not some two-page letter," said state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security. "You can't begin addressing the funding problems until you know when the roads are expected to come on line." The transportation committee, which met Tuesday morning at McAllen City Hall, has been at odds with the Texas Department of Transportation since earlier this year, when the agency announced the halt...

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

WESLACO — Nearly 80 people filled a lecture hall here Thursday for a town hall forum with Texas Department of Transportation officials on a potential interstate highway designation in the region. The forum at South Texas College’s Mid-Valley Campus was the first of four planned public meetings in the Rio Grande Valley addressing the state’s Trans-Texas Corridor plan for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north. TxDOT is developing plans for the first interstate in eastern Texas to connect Texarkana to one of three points in the south: U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77...