3 Agents’ Deaths in Baja Ruled ‘Suspicious’

Baja California’s chief medical examiner Thursday ruled “suspicious” the deaths of three Mexican drug agents whose battered bodies were found near a smashed car off a mountain highway between Tijuana and Mexicali.

Francisco Acuna Campa, head of the state medical examiner’s office in Mexicali, said fatal head wounds shared by all three and other injuries suggested that the federal agents may have been killed before the car plunged off a treacherous stretch into a ravine more than 300 feet below this week.

Acuna said the agents suffered head wounds caused by a blunt object that “could be a pipe or a bat.”

Although he did not rule out that the three may have died in a crash, he said it was unlikely. Some injuries appeared to have occurred after death, Acuna said. “There is violence and suspicious circumstances,” he said during a telephone interview.

If the three prove to have been slain, the incident would be the latest in a wave of apparent drug violence in and around Tijuana--home base of the feared Arellano Felix drug gang--and the first time in years that so many federal drug agents were killed at once. The city’s police chief was assassinated Feb. 27.

Federal authorities in Mexico City said the three had been sent to Baja California on March 1 as part of a beefed-up effort to investigate the flow of heroin, cocaine and other drugs smuggled into the United States.

Announcing the deaths Wednesday, the head of Mexico’s anti-drug forces, Mariano Herran Salvatti, displayed photographs of the battered bodies and asserted that the deaths “could be a message” to authorities. But, he vowed, “we will continue with the same vigor, and redouble our efforts in the fight against criminal organizations.”

Baja investigators initially labeled the deaths accidental, saying the car apparently was going too fast on the hazardous Tijuana-Mexicali highway. But Acuna said the similarity of wounds was unusual because injuries during car crashes tend to differ depending on where victims are seated.

The bodies were found late Tuesday near the agents’ official white Chevrolet in a deep ravine. They had been reported missing Monday.

The deaths were a blow to U.S. law enforcement officials, with whom the three had shared information on the narcotics trade. The agents were last seen in San Diego on Monday. They kept residences in San Diego and stayed there Sunday for safety reasons and to provide intelligence to U.S. officials, Herran Salvatti said.

“It’s another example of the steps the drug cartels will take any time they feel threatened,” said William Gore, special agent in charge of the FBI office in San Diego. “It’s a shock and a loss, but it’s not a surprise.”

The group’s senior member, Jose Patino Moreno, was a ranking drug prosecutor long familiar to U.S. authorities. The other agents were identified as Oscar Pompa Plaza, a veteran agent, and Rafael Torres Bernal, an army captain on loan to the anti-narcotics effort.

The three had focused on three investigations in Tijuana: one into the Arellano Felix brothers, who allegedly lead the Tijuana cartel; another into the gang’s alleged financial mastermind, Jesus Labra Aviles, who was arrested March 13; and a third into Labra’s recently slain lawyer, Gustavo Galvez Reyes.

The three agents also were investigating a drug group in Mexicali, Herran Salvatti said.

Acuna said his findings would be forwarded to state prosecutors as part of a probe to determine whether the deaths were homicides or accidental. The federal attorney general’s office also is investigating.

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Ellingwood reported from San Diego and Sheridan from Mexico City.