Mass Killer Salcido Seized at a Roadblock in Mexico : Picked Up Near His Hometown

California winery worker Ramon Salcido, wanted in a bloody rampage that left seven people dead, including his wife and two of his baby daughters, was arrested today at a roadblock in northwestern Mexico, officials said.

“He was arrested before dawn this morning in a surprise roadblock set up by agents fighting the illicit drug trade,” said Vicente Mendoza, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

Salcido was picked up just outside Guasave, a village near Los Mochis, his hometown in Sinaloa state about 850 miles northwest of Mexico City, Mendoza said.

Mendoza said Salcido, a Mexican national, will be flown to Mexico City later today for an extradition hearing.

“He has been arrested at the request of U.S. authorities who have asked for his extradition. We are bringing him to Mexico City,” Mendoza said, adding that Salcido is in the custody of the Federal Judicial Police, a branch of the attorney general’s office.

Salcido was the object of one of the biggest manhunts in California history. The FBI joined the search on Monday.

He was arrested the same day that services were being held in the Sonoma County wine country town of Glen Ellen, Calif., for some of the six members of Salcido’s family who were killed.

About 300 people attended a memorial service Tuesday for another of the victims, Tracy Toovey.

Salcido, 28, was a forklift operator who worked with Toovey at the Grand Cru winery.

Cocaine-Fueled Night

Salcido’s wife, mother-in-law, two young sisters-in-law and Toovey were butchered, shot to death or both on April 15. The next day, three of Salcido’s daughters were found with their throats cut, two of them dead.

The survivor, 3-year-old Carmina, is recovering in Petaluma Valley Hospital. She told investigators that her father cut her and her sisters.

Salcido’s friends told the San Francisco Examiner that he had a frenzied, cocaine-fueled night of drinking and dancing before the killings.

“He party, party, party all the time--run around all night,” the newspaper quoted one unidentified person as saying. “He drink everything--beer, wine, tequila.”

Sonoma County Sheriff Dick Michaelsen said his detectives are not sure what touched off Salcido. It was known that earlier Salcido had been served with a court order demanding payment of more than $5,000 in past-due child support payments for a child by another woman, and friends said this had upset him.

It was also known that he was having troubles with his slain second wife, Angela, who reportedly wanted an annulment. And acquaintances said he was very jealous of her.

Salcido’s mother, Valentino Bojorquez Armendariz, told The Times on Tuesday that her son called her last Friday and told her, “Mama, this is last time you will hear my voice.”

Bojorquez said her eldest son was sobbing in the brief phone call to her home in Los Mochis. She said her memory of the conversation wasn’t clear, but she remembered that Salcido said, “I have problems and I’m going to kill myself,” or “I have problems and they’re going to kill me.”

He then hung up, and Bojorquez said she had not heard from him since.