The Los Angeles Times is reporting that another high-powered rifle provided by the ATF’s Fast and Furious failed gun-running scheme has been used to murder another Mexican citizen. The Police chief in Hostotipaquillo, Jalisco. Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire.
The Times article cites internal Department of Justice records that suggest “that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico.
According to the Times article one of Chief Rosales Astorga’s body guards was killed, and his wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.
The LATimes reports:
Local authorities said eight suspects in their 20s and 30s were arrested after police seized them nearby with a cache of weapons — rifles, grenades, handguns, helmets, bulletproof vests, uniforms and special communications equipment. The area is a hot zone for rival drug gangs, with members of three cartels fighting over turf in the region.
A semi-automatic WASR rifle, the firearm that killed the chief, was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz. The notation on the Department of Justice trace records said the WASR was used in a “HOMICIDE – WILLFUL – KILL –PUB OFF –GUN” –ATF code for “Homicide, Willful Killing of a Public Official, Gun.”
The weapon used to kill Chief Rosales Astorga was purchased on Feb. 22, 2010, by 26-year-old Jacob Anthony Montelongo of Phoenix. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, making false statements and smuggling goods from the United States and was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Montelongo along with Erick Avila Davila, Danny Cruz Morones, Jamie Avila, Uriel Patino, Julio Carrillo, Alfredo Celis, Sean Christopher Steward, Jacob Wayne Chambers, Jonathan Earvin Fernandez, Dejan Hercegovac, Joshua David Moore, Jose Angel Polanco, Francisco Javier Ponce, and Manual Fabian-Acosta purchased or otherwise participated in the purchases of guns from various gun dealers on behalf of the cartels in later 2009 and 2010.
U.S. government agents lost track of about 1,400 weapons sold to straw buyers in Operation Fast and Furious.
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in the desert near Rio Rico, Ariz., on Dec. 14, 2010, with guns purchased in the government’s failed gun running scheme.
According to the Times, “court records show Montelongo personally obtained at least 109 firearms during Fast and Furious. How the WASR ended up in the state of Jalisco, which is deep in central Mexico and includes the country’s second-largest metropolis, Guadalajara, remained unclear.
After the shooting in Jalisco, local officials said some of the suspects confessed to two other shootouts in the area, including one that left seven people dead, all part of the continuing feud by rival cartel members.
The ATF declined to discuss the matter; officials said they are still compiling an inventory of all the lost firearms for a complete account of the Fast and Furious operation.”