EL PASO, Texas -- The eight bullets that killed Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana outside his home down the street from the city's police chief were fired at close range and left little doubt about their message.
Gonzalez, a Juarez cartel lieutenant shot on his quiet El Paso cul-de-sac this spring, was working for U.S. officials as a confidential informant, and experts suspect his slaying may be the first time assassins from one of Mexico's violent drug gangs have killed a ranking cartel member on American soil.
Experts said the murder represents a growing brazenness of the cartels on this side of the border that will most likely lead to more deaths.
""He got shot up close,"" said police chief Greg Allen. ""Whoever did it wanted to make sure it was known that it was for payback.""
Mexican drug kingpins, including Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin ""El Chapo"" Guzman, publicly gave hit men permission this year and last to cross the border in search of targets.
""There's an increasing number of [cartel] leaders living in the U.S., probably either to escape law enforcement or their enemies in Mexico, so that's one of the risks that has increased in the last few years,"" said Stephen Meiners, a senior tactical analyst for Latin America at Stratfor, a global intelligence company based in Austin, Texas.
""There's a possibility that this thing could get out of hand,"" he said.
Shannon O'Neil, an expert on Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations, said she knows of no other high-level killings in the U.S., but she fears Gonzalez's won't be the last.
""We have started to see more brazenness close to the border on the Mexican side and on the U.S. side,"" O'Neil said.
""Once you get these organizations firmly established in Mexico and the United States, you will have killings at all different levels.""
Gonzalez, a legal immigrant who lived with his family in an expensive neighborhood, was shot May 15 in front of his spacious home. His wife, Adriana Solis, and the couple's two children fled not long after.
Cartel-affiliated hit men have violently, and fatally, disciplined low-level, American-based drug dealers in the U.S. But El Paso police said Gonzalez was a lieutenant in the Juarez cartel, which traffics in marijuana, cocaine and heroin. The cartel was once among the most dangerous in Mexico but has recently lost some standing because of arrests, deaths and infighting.
El Paso police don't yet have an official motive in Gonzalez's slaying, but chief Allen said detectives are working on the assumption that a cartel colleague discovered he was discussing their illegal activities with federal agents.
Allen, who lives behind Gonzalez's house and heard the shots from his backyard, told the AP that he and other local authorities knew Gonzalez had been involved with drugs in the past but had no idea he was both a ranking Mexican gangster and federal informant. He's angry he wasn't briefed about a case his department now must solve as a local homicide.
The week after the killing, during a tense meeting of a multi-agency group called the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Allen said he told federal authorities that his future cooperation depended on his department being informed of their activities.
""How'd you like it if this happened in your neighborhood?"" Allen said he told the gathering.
http://www.newsobserver.com/nation_world/story/1623963.html
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