Five More Murders; Three Were of Women

(Guerrero, NA 20 November) In more drug war violence, several persons lost their lives yesterday in isolated incidents in Acapulco and nearby communities. In the Puerto Marqués traffic circle, Milton Carlos Palma Olea, also known as “El Kiry,” was found stoned to death. The incident occurred almost in front of the City Cemetery. In Tixla, a mountain community, Rosario Rodríguez Sánchez, 42, the proprietress of a local cantina, was attacked and killed by armed gunmen. Her partner was badly beaten, and her 16-year-old daughter was kidnapped. The gunmen fled towards Chilpancingo. In La Mica, an upland neighborhood near Renacimiento, Rafael Guillén Nájera, a construction worker, was shot by gunmen wielding .9mm pistols, who fled. In Las Pozas, a mountain town an hour away from Acapulco, an acting policeman named Mauro Cruz Calixto, 30, was kidnapped by gunmen carrying AK-47 automatic rifles. The vehicle was later found abandoned. No body was found. In the Hornos Insurgentes subdivision of Acapulco the badly beaten body of Bertina Francisco de la Cruz was discovered in her home. Of the five incidents, this was the only one that did not appear, on first blush, to be the work of drug gunmen. Twenty-one year old Kristal Ramirez Valencia was found murdered near the 200 km mark on the dirt road between Tecpan and Papanoa in a remote section of Guerrero State. She had been shot three times with a .9mm pistol, twice in the head.