Free Republic

CUILAPA, GUATEMALA — Four imprisoned Guatemalan policemen were killed in their cells Sunday, days after being arrested in connection with the deaths of three Salvadoran politicians, police said. Rioting inmates also took the warden and other prison officials hostage. National police spokesman Maria Jose Fernandez said she didn't know who had shot the prisoners. "It's confirmed, they killed the four of them," Fernandez said. Officers outside the jail in Cuilapa, 40 miles east of Guatemala City, showed reporters cell phone photos of the bullet-ridden bodies. Police said members of the violent Mara Salvatrucha gang rioted in the prison, capturing five...

Launching a counteroffensive against organized street thugs, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and police officials took the unusual step Wednesday of identifying the city's 11 worst gangs, then promising to go after them with teams of police, federal agents, probation officers and prosecutors. Facing 720 identifiable gangs with 39,000 members, the city's plan would target the most dangerous groups, which total at least 800 members. Those gangs are thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of mayhem........ But Wes McBride, executive director of the California Gang Investigators Assn. and a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, said he was...

A suspected MS-13 gang member arrested Saturday on assault and immigration charges is wanted in Honduras for the decapitation slayings late last year of his former in-laws. Albin Zelaya-Zelaya, 26, was charged in October for burglary of a habitation with intent to commit aggravated assault. He also was wanted by federal authorities for entering the country illegally, officials said. Investigators learned Zelaya-Zelaya, also known as Flaco, slipped into the United States sometime after Christmas, the day when Eleazar and Suyapa Vasquez were murdered in their home in Honduras. Also arrested Saturday were Zelaya-Zelaya's brother, Pablo Romero, 31; Miguel Estrada, 21;...

The petite young woman was a 16-year-old Laurel High School student three years ago when she decided to skip classes one day to join two other girls at a party at a Hyattsville apartment. At the party, she said, Oscar Ramos "Casper" Velasquez took her into a bedroom, where he kissed her and told her that if she didn't have sex with him, as many as 15 other teenagers and young men at the gathering would have sex with her. When she resisted, two more young men entered the room, the woman told jurors yesterday in federal court. One man...

PROGRESO — A 23-year-old Salvadoran with suspected Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang ties and a conviction for assaulting a New York police officer was arrested Wednesday trying to re-enter the country, Customs and Border Protection officials said. Santos Chileno-Gomez was arrested about 12:30 a.m. near the Pharr port of entry. He was one of four illegal immigrants spotted by Texas National Guard members equipped with night vision equipment. The guard members informed Border Patrol agents, who made the arrest. Chileno-Gomez, identified by his fingerprints as an MS-13 member, has an extensive criminal history that includes a conviction of second-degree assault on...

Cell phones found inside four prisoners 1 hour, 40 minutes ago SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Cellular telephones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador's maximum-security prison, authorities said Wednesday. The discovery was made Tuesday at the prison in Zacatecoluca, in central El Salvador, after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates, federal corrections chief Jaime Villanova said. The names of the prisoners, all members of the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha gang, were not released in order to avoid jeopardizing an ongoing investigation that began a month ago, he said. Capt. Juan Ramon Arevalo, director of the prison...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas- Border Patrol agents aided by National Guard members arrested a 22-year-old suspected member of the violent Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, gang on Wednesday as he tried to re-enter the United States, Customs and Border Protection said. Andres Gonzalo Manzaneres, of El Salvador, was one of nine illegal immigrants spotted by National Guard members monitoring images from surveillance cameras placed near the Los Tomates international bridge in Brownsville. The Guard members alerted Border Patrol agents in the field, who arrested the immigrants. Agents processing Manzaneres noticed MS-13 style tattoos on his body, and said a fingerprint scan turned up...

NUEVO LAREDO — Everyday at Casa del Migrante de Nazareth, emaciated and sunburned faces tell the story of suffering and hardship that immigrants go through in search of the American dream.Hundreds of Mexican and Latin-American immigrants arrive to Casa del Migrante, a shelter that offers them a warm meal and a bed. On Thursday afternoon, a group of doctors treated Migrante’s temporary residents free of charge. A dangerous road José Benjamín Lara, 26, from Coquicopan, Honduras, traveled for two months before arriving to Nuevo Laredo, and once in Casa del Migrante he was diagnosed with a kidney infection and malnutrition...

MISSION — Family and gang were one and the same for Leobardo Villarreal. So in March it was no coincidence that federal authorities finally arrested Villarreal, a 22-year-old second-generation member of the gang Hermano Pistoleros, through a tip they got after arresting his father and fellow gang member Juan Eladio Villarreal-Saenza, officials said. The Pistoleros, whom the FBI says Mexican drug cartels are hiring to run drugs and do contract killings, operate in Mexico and the United States. They are highly mobile, organized criminals who also happen to be illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said. While the federal...

INDIANAPOLIS — The slayings of seven family members unfolded when one victim returned home and drew a weapon as two gunmen were ransacking the house to find a safe they believed contained cash and cocaine, according to documents filed by prosecutors. One man arrested in last week's killings — James Stewart, 30 — was searching for the safe upstairs but found nothing and went downstairs, according to a probable cause affidavit filed Monday, the first detailed account of the incident. There he found that Magno Albarran, 29, had entered the house and pulled a gun on Desmond Turner, 28, whom...

Indianapolis - Police have arrested murder suspect Desmond Turner for the killings of seven members of one family on the east side, Thursday night...

INDIANAPOLIS - Police hunted on Friday for the killers who barged into a home and shot seven family members to death in the worst mass murder in Indianapolis in at least 25 years. A search of a home for one of the suspected gunmen turned up empty after police officers fired tear gas in and broke down a door Friday night. Police said 28-year-old ex-convict Desmond Turner was believed to have been inside. He had grown up in the area and returned last fall after getting out of prison on drug and weapons charges. Deputy Police Chief Tim Foley said...

Indianapolis - Police say an accomplice is in custody and they have a murder suspect surrounded. Police arrested a man they say is an accomplice in Thursday night's murders. The arrest was made after a traffic stop at 14th and Rural Friday evening...

INDIANAPOLIS - Seven family members, the youngest just 5 years old, were shot to death in their home near a women's prison, and police said Friday they were seeking at least two men for questioning. The attack appeared to have been a home invasion, but not random or gang-related, Deputy Police Chief Tim Foley said. He said investigators were considering several possible motives. Police reached the home shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday after a witness who had dropped off one of the victims at the home saw her being dragged inside and heard gunfire. Inside, the officers found three children...

One man is dead and three others in custody following an early morning shootout Friday in Nuevo Laredo between state police and drug cartel gunmen believed responsible for at least 10 homicides here — including the death of a local police officer Thursday night. The firefight, which started about 1 a.m., ignited when a team of state police officers approached a home they suspected was used by the men who hours earlier had killed police officer Jesus Segovia Sanchez, authorities said. Two cartel members were arrested and another injured in the early morning melee. One state police officer also was...

In the aftermath of a prison riot in southern Guatemala, the eyes that peer out amid the tattoo of a skull covering half his face are contorted in pain as fellow inmates care for his bleeding shoulder. They are members of gangs, whose stories began in Los Angeles and then were exported to Central America. There the gangs grew, became more violent, and now they head back to the United States. Known as maras, the gangs formed in the 1980s, when immigrants fleeing brutal civil war in El Salvador settled in Los Angeles. To protect themselves from already established L.A....

If you don't have access to Texas newspapers or the internet, you may not have heard the sensational news about the enormous cache of weapons our government recently seized in Laredo, Texas. U.S. authorities grabbed two completed Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), materials for making 33 more, military-style grenades, 26 grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, 1,280 rounds of ammunition, silencers, machine gun assembly kits, 300 primers, bullet-proof vests, police scanners, sniper scopes, narcotics, and cash. That sounds like a war is going on in Texas! If bomb-making factories and firearms assembly plants are ordinary day-to-day business...

WASHINGTON- Some 375 gang members have been arrested in 24 states and the District of Columbia over the past two weeks as part of a yearlong operation targeting gangs with criminal immigrant members, the Homeland Security Department said Friday. The arrests bring to 2,388 the number of gang members apprehended through Operation Community Shield, which combines local law enforcement with federal immigration forces. Of those arrested, 922 were members of Mara Salvatrucha gangs, which have ties to Central America. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that previously local law enforcement might arrest gang members and not be aware they also...

All were identified as Salvadoran with criminal histories McALLEN - Five members of the violent Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha have been arrested in South Texas during the past four days, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Wednesday. All were identified as Salvadoran with criminal histories that included weapons violations, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Border Patrol spokesman Roy Cervantes said one of the five was arrested just north of Corpus Christi when the officials stopped truck with he and 10 other illegal immigrants. His tattoos identified him as a member of the gang. The arrests occurred...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Federal officials have warned U.S. Border Patrol agents that they could be the targets of assassins hired by immigrant smugglers, according to a confidential memo. "Unidentified Mexican alien smugglers are angry about the increased security along the U.S./Mexico border and have agreed that the best way to deal with U.S. Border Patrol agents is to hire a group of contract killers," the Department of Homeland Security said in a Dec. 21 Officer Safety Alert. The alert states that the smugglers intend to bring members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang - known as MS-13 - into...