Deaths of 12 at Tijuana Rite Blamed on Gas

Coroner’s officials said Friday that 12 people who died during a nightlong religious ceremony in a closed, four-room house asphyxiated from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a butane-gas lantern used for light.

Victor Vazquez, a deputy district attorney here, said the windows and doors of the small house in Colonia Mariano Matamoros on the southeastern edge of the city were shut tight, keeping fresh air from getting inside. There apparently were no vents in the house that would have allowed the gas to escape.

“It was definitely an accident,” Vazquez said of the Thursday-morning incident.

As the lantern continued to burn, people began falling asleep, a symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning, officials said. Not everyone in the house died; five victims were found unconscious and hospitalized. A sixth survivor--who was said to have escaped sometime during the ceremony--was taken to the hospital later Thursday and was in serious condition. Three remained comatose Friday.

Many of the dead and injured are related. Among the dead were two mothers, each of whom perished along with her two children. Also killed were a husband and wife.

Mexican authorities have now ruled out a fruit punch found at the house as a source of the deaths. The group drank the fruit punch, which one survivor said led to screaming, and officials at first believed the beverage was contaminated with an industrial solvent or alcohol.

The all-night religious ritual apparently played a role in the deaths. On several occasions Wednesday night, people tried to enter the house but were turned away by the group’s spiritual leader, Federico Padres Mexia, or others who were participating in the religious ceremony that included chanting and standing or sitting inside a circle delineated by a rope with 13 knots that was laid on the floor. Mexia, 61, is now in a coma.

A survivor, Alfredo Osuna Hernandez, 22, said the group was engaged in a “cleansing” ritual that began early Wednesday night. Asked why no one left to seek help, Osuna said, “It is very damaging to leave the circle.”

The daughter of one of the victims, Ana Faviola Miranda Juarez, 19, who entered the house early Thursday morning, said it smelled strongly of gas. She didn’t disturb the apparently slumbering occupants, who included her mother, because she felt the ritual was still under way, and said some of the people were snoring.

Her mother, Gloria Miranda Juarez, 45, owned the home and lived there with Mexia. She was among the dead.

News of the deaths continued to consume Tijuana and its media on Friday. Some relatives of the victims were furious over Mexican newspaper reports characterizing the deaths as a result of some satanic rite.

Several family members who gathered outside a public hospital, awaiting word on their loved ones, said that their relatives were staunch Roman Catholics, and that some had gone to Mass on Wednesday to celebrate the religious holiday of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Jesus Moreno, 23, whose sister died and whose mother is comatose, said his mother recited the rosary every night and blessed her children. “The man who ran the tortilla shop told my mother our whole family was under a spell of bad luck,” Moreno said.

His mother thought that perhaps he was right, because of the family’s lack of jobs and money. Out of curiosity, Moreno said, his mother went to the house.

On Friday, a picture of Mexia began to emerge, painted by those who live in the Colonia Mariano Matamoros shantytown, home to many migrants from the interior of Mexico, and by those in the Riverside County town of Sun City, where Mexia had a home. He also lived briefly in Encinitas.

Mexia, a husky, 5-foot-8, 180-pound man, moved in with Gloria Miranda in July, according to neighbors. She had first moved into the house a few months before.

The home, with its brown stucco walls, pitched roof, glass windows and beach-ball-size satellite dish bolted above the front door, stood out from the others in the dusty, teeming hillside community, where most houses are little more than shacks with tar-paper walls and corrugated metal roofs.

Soon after Mexia moved in, word spread that he was a spiritual leader who, often through mediums, conducted religious cleansing rituals at the house, where he was building a chapel in the yard because God was coming, a neighbor said.

“He said God was coming down because he (Mexia) had asked him to,” said Isabel Mendez, 30, who lives nearby. “He said it was going to make this community very famous, and lots of reporters were going to arrive, and lots of hotels would be built.”

Another neighbor, Daria Machado, 26, a mother of two, said there always seemed to be a lot of people at Mexia’s house, and the religious ceremonies took place often, though not necessarily late into the night. It was common to see cars with California licenses parked around the house, she said.

“They would go inside, and you wouldn’t see them anymore,” Machado said. “The house is very closed up with curtains on the windows so you couldn’t see much.”

Mexia became friendly with Rafael Corchado Meraz, 37, who operated La Costena, a neighborhood tortilla shop.

Corchado, an American citizen who lived in Tijuana, became one of Mexia’s strongest supporters, sometimes urging his customers and his workers to attend the rituals, which several of them did. After finishing his tortilla deliveries, Corchado would frequently go to Mexia’s house and spend the rest of the day there.

He told people in the neighborhood that the prayer meetings with Mexia would cure them of their bad luck, which kept them unemployed.

That message resounded loud and clear in a barrio where people are poor and many had traveled a long distance from the interior of Mexico to look for jobs.

Corchado went to the house Wednesday night. He was among those found dead.

“He would ask me if I wanted to go,” said Jorge Reyes Castro, 18, who worked at the tortilla factory. “He said they would cure people there, and that they were going to see God. He said everyone would sit in a chair and close their eyes, and then their body would be like asleep. And that they would sleep three to four hours and talk to God.”

Rosa Oralia Valenzuela, 18, was among those waiting Friday outside the intensive care unit at the hospital to learn the condition of their brothers, sisters or parents.

Oralia, whose two sisters-in-law died and whose father-in-law was in a coma, said she had attended a few of Mexia’s sessions.

At the first meeting, she said, she was introduced to a woman named Conchita who Mexia said was a medium through whom God would speak. Oralia said Conchita sat in an armchair and stood up as each person went up to her.

Conchita would have the people lift their arms, turn over their palms and describe their problems. Oralia said she was reluctant to tell the medium anything. “So she looked at me and said, ‘Here is the key to luck.’ I looked down, and I saw she had pressed nothing into my hand,” Conchita said.

On Wednesday night, when the deadly carbon monoxide episode began, Mexia had told people that a particularly powerful medium from nearby Rosarito Beach would be coming to the session. It’s not known whether the medium arrived.

Neighbors of Mexia’s in Sun City, a community of about 11,000 east of Lake Elsinore, said Mexia moved into a beige, Spanish-style stucco house in a new subdivision about two years ago from Encinitas. The house in the 28000 block of Calle Gaviota has been for sale for a year. It was first offered at $120,000, but is now on the market at $93,500.

They knew him to be a concrete mason who did some work on his driveway and who at times also helped other neighbors with their concrete work.

One neighbor, who declined to be identified, said Mexia told him that his wife had moved to Mexico City and that he was now living in Tijuana with another woman at a house he had built for about $8,000.

Shirley Hosking, who lives next door to Mexia’s house in Sun City, described him as a quiet person, who told her landlord that “he had died and went to heaven twice, and that God gave him a book.”

She said he was living in the house with a woman named Martha who she thought was his wife, but she apparently moved out last summer with the help of family members.

“He was kind of weird in odd ways,” Hosking said. “He had a car with a dead battery, and every day he jumped it.” She said she had loaned him a battery charger and he had it for three to four months. He used it only to start his car, and not to charge the battery.

Mexia also once lived in Encinitas. A former neighbor in the 700 block of Snapdragon Street recalled that Mexia had a heart condition and was retired. He didn’t seem particularly religious, at least compared to his wife, Martha, said Berta Smith.

“Martha was a good friend of mine. She come up every day for coffee. She did (housecleaning) work in Solana Beach and Del Mar,” Smith said. “They moved to Sun City, and we were sorry to see them go.”

Found inside the house in Tijuana were three psalmbooks, said Jaime Sam Fierro, a commander of the Baja California judicial police. Two of the books showed they were from El Templo de Mediodia--the Midday Church--and were dated 1980.

The third book was entitled “Oraciones Dadas al Sexto Sello”--Prayers Given to the Sixth Seal--which refers to apocalyptic visions of God’s judgment in the Book of Revelation.

Dr. Gustavo Salazar, head pathologist in the Tijuana coroner’s office, said the conclusion of carbon monoxide poisoning was based on preliminary results of six autopsies conducted Friday.

Internal organs and tissues of the dead, including livers, stomachs, lungs and intestines, are being turned over to the San Diego County medical examiner’s office for more detailed toxicology tests, Vazquez said. The Americans will try to confirm the carbon monoxide poisoning through blood tests.

A spokesman for the San Diego County medical examiner said his office had agreed to help the Mexicans. He said that, depending on the laboratory work done in Tijuana, it could take several days or even a few weeks to get the results of toxicology tests.

The list of the dead:

Maria Dora Hernandez Peraza, 38, and her two daughters, Blanca Sarabia Hernandez, 20, and Maribel Sarabia Hernandez, 15.

Elodia Mondragon Jimenez, 30, and her children, Jesus Eduardo Peralta Mondragon, 15, and Monica Lizette Peralta Mondragon, 11.

Fidel Coronel Franco, 65, and his wife, Benita Rosales Villalpando, believed to be 45.

Consuelo Moreno Ponce, 14.

Rafael Corchado Meraz, 37.

Margarita Ramos de Osuna, 20.

and Gloria Miranda Juarez, 45.

Those hospitalized:

Mexia.

Consuelo Ponce Ramirez, 35.

Juan Jose Sarabia, 42.

Alfredo Osuna Hernandez, 22, husband of Blanca Sarabia Hernandez, and their daughter, Ana Karen Osuna, 8 months.

Moises Merida Gonzalez, 32, who apparently walked out of the ceremony before police discovered the bodies and the injured participants.

Times staff writers Laurie Becklund in Tijuana; H.G. Reza, Armando Acuna, and G. Jeanette Avent in San Diego, and Dave Lesher in Sun City contributed to this report.