According to Borderland Beat, (warning: don't go to the link unless you have the stomach for grisly photos) at 12:35 a.m. on Saturday, an anonymous tipster called the emergency hotline to report bodies on the sidewalk in front of the commercial center, Plaza Sendero. The bodies had been dumped there. Witnesses said that earlier,
...vehicles with armed men drove up and set up roadblocks along the Cayaco and Puerto Marqués streets. The commandos then began to threaten bystanders, local shopkeepers and the customers inside, "telling them to shutdown their businesses and for everyone to clear the street or they would be shot."The bodies had been decapitated, one had been semi-disemboweled, and the victims were as young as 16. The killers had probably washed their hands in the fountain at the center of the plaza, as the water in it was crimson.
The siege lasted about 15 minutes and it closed the busy avenue to the local transit services and other public service vehicles. During this time, police officers did not make their presence known, and authorities didn't respond to the scene until well after the assailants had fled.
Six more bodies were later found inside a taxi along the Vicente Guerrero Blvd., and two were found in a canal near the crime scene. A man was then gunned down near the Plaza Sendero. That same night, a body was found in a Volkswagen in La Cima with gunshot wounds to his head.
The L.A. Times reported a total of 31 people were killed in or near Acapulco that weekend in a turf battle among three drug gangs. Reports the Times,
Pedestrians and motorists have been stopped or pulled from their vehicles at gunpoint by masked men. Extortion is rampant in the tourism-dependent city. Forensic investigators tell of bodies mutilated with acts that they have no technical terms to accurately describe, such as decapitated human heads discovered without skin or hair.
TeamsterNation wonders, if Mexico were renamed "Afghanistan," would the U.S. government still be trying to open the border to trucks?
