TIJUANA An alleged gunman who led a criminal cell has been detained by state authorities, accused of executing a high-ranking police commander.
On Sunday, the Baja California Attorney General's Office announced that state police investigators had captured in Tijuana on Sept. 9 José Gilberto García Naranjo, who it said led a team of assassins.
According to the agency, he was involved in the murder of a state police commander in Rosarito Beach, José Antonio Sánchez Vázquez, who died in hail of gunfire on July 27, 2010 outside the state police offices.
The state's homicide unit had concluded that García and other men in his criminal group had carried out the order to kill the commander, the Attorney General's Office said.
According to that agency, the order came from Héctor Eduardo Guajardo Hernández, known as "El Güicho," one of the state's most notorious suspects who himself is linked to at least 23 murders.
Guajardo had ordered the commander killed in retaliation for the capture a group of people who had been part of Guajardo's criminal cell, the agency said. They were wanted for human smuggling.
Authorities believe had led Guajardo had led the Baja California operations of the Sinaloa cartel since January of 2010. He was detained in a gunfight on May 9 in Mexicali and escaped a few days later from a hospital in Mexico City. He was recaptured on Sept. 6 in a suburb of Guadalajara.
Guajardo is a suspect in the killing of 10 law enforcement officers in various attacks in Baja California in 2009 and 2010 and in the raid on a Tijuana drug rehabilitation center that killed 13 patients.
The agency said that, once detained, García confessed that he belonged to a criminal group of deadly enforcers who worked for various criminal cells.
Based on the homicide unit's investigation, the State Attorney General's Office had requested an immediate arrest warrant against García on charges of murder and of participating in organized crime. A judge in Rosarito Beach granted the request and state agents served the warrant on Sept. 9.
Omar.millan@sandiegored.com
