High-tech tool helps rescue kidnap victim

Third abduction in three days in Baja

TIJUANA – In a dramatic conclusion worthy of "NCIS," the Mexican military tracked the whereabouts of a businessman through his cell phone and rescued him Tuesday morning, 90 minutes after he was

abducted by a group of men posing as state police agents.

The commander of Baja California's Second Military Zone, Gilbert Landeros, said that two people were detained in the operation to free the man.

He theorized that the kidnappers belonged to an old criminal cell that once served one of the drug cartels in the region, and was now in business for itself. More suspects are being sought in connection with the crime, he added.

The kidnapping victim spoke to the news media during a press conference Tuesday afternoon at the Morelos army barracks. As is customary, such crime victims are not identified.

The man, whose face was covered and with his back to photographers, said he was businessman who had lived in the city for 25 years.

The man said that he was driving his car around 7:30 a.m. when a convoy of four vehicles

stopped him near the downhill slope of the Buena Vista neighborhood and avenida Tecnológico, in the Otay district.

The eight men identified themselves as state police investigators -- three of them showed police badges – and asked him to step out of his car, but he refused. He was pulled out by force and the men told him that the car he was driving had been reported as stolen.

They put him in a supposed official vehicle and took him to a security house, where he said they beat and threatened him.

He said they pointed a gun to his face and told him: "Another businessman who is going to fall into our laps." They asked him to call his family and tell them that he had been kidnapped.

Afterward, they wrapped his hands, legs and head with adhesive tape. They warned him that if he didn't cooperate they were going to dump his body in the on the grounds of the La Presa dam.

The commander said that the phone had tracking technology and his family immediately contacted the military. Based on the phone's coordinates, the army was able to swoop down on the security house, located on Lomas Street in the upscale residential neighborhood of Lomas de Agua Caliente, in the downtown district.

There, soldiers freed the victim, detained two people and confiscated three guns, four chargers, 33 rounds and police equipment, Landeros said.

Based on information gathered at the site, he added, the army found a second address on Cerritos Street in the Villas Lomas neighborhood, also downtown, where two rifles and 377 rounds were confiscated.

The commander identified the detained as Francisco Antonio Montelongo, 21, a native of Tijuana, and

Filiberto González, 32, from the Mexican state of Nayarit.

"They didn't have time to demand a ransom," Landeros said. "They were caught unawares."

The kidnapping victim said that over the years several of his family members, friends and fellow businessmen had received threats that they would be abducted – and some actually have been.

He said he was thankful that the military acted so swiftly because the "hell" he endured was not as long as some of the people he knew.

Though statistics were not immediately available, the number of reported kidnappings has dropped significantly in the last year in Tijuana.

Authorities say that's a result of the crackdown on organized crime and a campaign to rid the police ranks of corrupt officers.

But just in the three days, authorities announced three kidnapping cases in the city, involving five victims. One of them, a 75-year-old man, apparently died of a heart attack as the result of the abduction, an initial police report said. Two people who witnessed the kidnapping were injured.

In a separate crime, a couple, a man and a woman, were kidnapped Saturday. State police agents, acting on an anonymous tip, rescued them from a house in the city's east side, at midnight Sunday. The kidnappers had left the home before the agents arrived.

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com

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