27 Feb
(02-26) 17:38 PST SAN FRANCISCO — An unusual French investigation into the death of a French national in San Francisco concluded that the man was stabbed in a surprise attack outside his apartment and could not have committed suicide, as local authorities once suggested, the man’s father said Thursday.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/27/BAUP165QSD.DTL
13 Feb
Guido Salvador Carabajo-Jara turned 26 the day before he was killed in Wednesday’s gruesome accident. He was crossing a busy street near his home in Queens when he was hit by an SUV, then impaled by a steel plate under a second vehicle, a van. His body wasn’t discovered until the van driver arrived in Brooklyn about an hour later.
His sister, Rosa Carabajo, and his cousin Felix Jara returned to their Queens neighborhood Thursday from the hospital morgue, weeping and distressed.
“He was an excellent person, very easygoing, very happy,” Jara said in Spanish. “I was in shock. We don’t know how this could have happened. I didn’t believe it until I saw his face.”
Police said the death was accidental and that they have no plans to charge the two drivers, who both have clean driving records. The miles of dragging wore off the hair on the back of Carabajo-Jara’s head and his clothing and skin on his legs and buttocks.
An autopsy found that Carabajo-Jara died from multiple blunt-impact injuries, medical examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said Thursday. It hadn’t been determined whether he died before the van started dragging him.
Details emerged Thursday from police and relatives about the victim, who shared an apartment with his cousin and sister. Carabajo-Jara’s wife and mother live in Ecuador.
Another relative, Ignacio Quintero, said Carabajo-Jara had a 4-year-old daughter in Ecuador and faithfully sent money back to his family there to care for the girl. He described Carabajo-Jara as a hard worker whose mission was to provide for his child and save enough money to build a home in Ecuador.
“The family is destroyed,” Quintero said in Spanish. “They are in a lot of pain.”
Carabajo-Jara was supposed to meet Felix Jara at 8 a.m. Wednesday to go to work laying tile in Brooklyn. When he didn’t show, his family spent the day looking for him.
It wasn’t until about 11 p.m. Wednesday that police notified them that he had been killed. No identification had been found with Carabajo-Jara — only a business card, Western Union receipt and broken iPhone.
He was hit Wednesday morning in the Corona section of Queens, while apparently crossing against the light. The driver, Gustavo Acosta, called police, who arrived to find the victim gone.
About two vehicles behind, though, Manual Lituma Sanchez ran over Carabajo-Jara with his van, and Carabajo-Jara became hooked to the underside of the van. Unaware of anything wrong, Lituma Sanchez drove to Brooklyn, ending up in Brighton Beach, where he worked as a delivery man, police said.
At one point, he even suspected something was wrong, pulled over and checked under the hood. But he did not look under the car.
“I didn’t feel anything, and I didn’t hear anything,” Lituma Sanchez told reporters Wednesday. “I didn’t know what happened.”
The van traveled for nearly an hour before a pedestrian alerted the driver to something dragging under the van. It was only then that Lituma Sanchez saw the body and called authorities.
Police retraced the van’s route and recovered a blue jacket believed to have belonged to the victim. Grisly surveillance video showed the body disappearing, swept underneath the van moments after being hit by the SUV. A white car is shown swerving in between.
“Everyone is crying, especially in my country,” Jara said. “Everyone is going crazy.”
It was the third death of an Ecuadorean immigrant to shock New Yorkers in a little more than three months.
Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhanay, a 31-year-old real estate agent, was walking arm in arm with his brother in Brooklyn in December when he was beaten to death in an apparent hate crime by assailants who shouted anti-Hispanic and anti-gay slurs.
That killing followed the death on Long Island of Marcelo Lucero, 37, an Ecuadorean immigrant who was fatally stabbed Nov. 8. Prosecutors allege that seven teenagers charged in Lucero’s assault had set out to attack a Hispanic person.
8 Feb
By Lizbeth Diaz Lizbeth Diaz – Fri Feb 6, 2:49 pm ET
Reuters – A state policeman at a crime scene where two police agents were gunned down inside their truck in the …
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexican drug gangs near the U.S. border are breaking into police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war.
“You’re next, bastard … We’re going to get you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.
The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves.
“No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car.
Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.
Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments.
Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes.
The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year.
Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say.
“These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers,” said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta.
“Before, the gangs began infiltrating the radio after a police execution, which was bad enough, but now they are doing it beforehand and the force feels terrorized,” he said.
WORN-OUT BODY ARMOR
Officers in threadbare uniforms and worn-out body armor say they are no match for drug gangs with powerful weapons and state-of-the art technology. Some police cling to religious trinkets and pray for protection, but many others have taken early retirement.
“I and many of my colleagues are thinking our time in the force is over,” said Olivia Vidal, a Tijuana policewoman with 15 years in the force. “I have three kids. Two are at university. I would never let them follow in my footsteps.”
Drug hitmen are brazenly using pirate radio decoders to flag police murders in advance on the airwave, often playing the brassy accordion-led “narcocorrido” ballads that lionize the escapades of heavily armed, womanizing traffickers.
The gangsters use the decoder to access the radio frequency and then use a transmitter linked to a CD player and a microphone to transmit the narcocorrido music and the threats.
In one recent attack, hitmen killed two officers in their vehicle in Tijuana and then blasted drug ballads over police radio while naming their next targets, just as officers were reaching the first crime scene.
Some gangs sarcastically offer their “condolences” over the air after an execution, broadcasting messages like: “We are so sorry.”
(Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Kieran Murray)
30 Jan
The Manilla Folder 
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