Baja Prison Warden Quits After Slayings

The director of the La Mesa state penitentiary resigned one week after four inmates were fatally shot and a guard was wounded in a gangland-style shootout among inmates.

Prison director Gerardo Gonzalez Aragon offered his resignation late Monday after nine turbulent months behind the walls. During Gonzalez’s tenure, more than a dozen inmates died either by homicide or suicide, and a half-dozen others escaped from the 34-year-old facility.

Gonzalez was replaced by Jorge Alberto Duarte Castillo, director of Tijuana’s juvenile hall, who was deputy warden at La Mesa from 1981 to 1984 and again in 1988.

Pressure had been mounting for Gonzalez to step down since the shootout last Wednesday. A group of inmates smuggled pistols into the prison’s newest and supposedly most-secure section.