Armed Commando Confront each Other

 Buggs for Borderland Beat

For several minutes, two armed groups clashed in Tecate with no intervention from law enforcement to respond to reports from frantic citizens, nor did they arrest a single person of those involved.

At the scene of the confrontation, six trucks were found with broken windows and damage from gunfire, with splatter blood inside, with magazines of rounds, weapons of different calibers, radios and fragmentation grenades. On the scene they also found two men that were killed by gunfire. The criminals managed to flee without being detected by any authority. According to unidentified sources, more than 100 casings from different calibers were found in the immediate area, but all of them were from long guns.

The events took place at dawn on Friday, February 5, around 5:00 in the morning, on one side of the Tecate-Mexicali toll road at the top of Loma Tova and the Encinal Ejido. According to police reports, a command made up of seven or eight trucks entered the town from Tijuana.

Minutes previously, at around 5:00 in the morning, they stormed a house, where they shot a man identified as Diego. While they were patrolling the area, they clashed with another group of armed men where they managed to injure at least one person and damage several vehicles with gunfire.

In total, six trucks were located at the scene, some could no longer be driven due to the heavy damage, while others got stuck or were abandoned with multiple bullet holes caused by the gun fire.

Loaded magazines from long gun could be seen in most of the vehicles, as well as tactical gear, a handgun and a fragmentation grenade.

The first reports that came in warned of a convoy of trucks and detonations of gunfire near the Adelina López Murrieta elementary school, in the middle of the bridge that passes over the toll highway and that connects to Ejido El Encinal. There they found a Grand Cherokee that had been part of the confrontation. The vehicle had bullet holes and broken windows, as well as blood on both the rear seats and driver’s seats. Inside this vehicle there were magazines loaded with AK-47 rounds, a firearm known as Cuernos de Chivo, as well as at least twenty casings of the same caliber were found on the ground scattered on the bridge.

Under the bridge, about a half block, they also found three pickup trucks that were also involved. Two of them were facing each other, with the body of a man who had been killed by gunfire. It is believed that the man that was killed, identified as José Guadalupe Quiñones, was driving one of the two Toyota pickup trucks. The man had been shot several times, but was not found armed. Around his body, two more pickups, a Ram and a Silverado were found  abandoned. 

Around the pickups, dozens of casings of different calibers were found, as well as a grenade and different loaded magazines. All three vehicles had bullet holes.

On the same street, inside a house, the second body was found and several casings around it. Two trucks, a gray Toyota and a blue Ford Explorer inside the yard of the house. Another gray four-door pickup was reported abandoned on one of the nearby roads in the area, with several bullet holes on the front windshield and more than a dozen spent casings scattered on the ground.

This happened two days after the councilor Alfonso Zacarías Rodríguez was assassinated less than a block from the Municipal Palace of Tecate.