US soldier dies in Mexico drug attack

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

US soldier dies in Mexico drug attack
Published: 9:48AM Thursday November 05, 2009
Source: Reuters

Gunmen with automatic weapons burst into a Mexican strip club on the US border, opened fire on patrons and killed six people including an American soldier, the army said.

The hooded gunmen stormed into the bar in Ciudad Juarez as strippers were dancing for customers, sought out the six men and shot them each several times. A 26-year-old off-duty US soldier who had crossed over from El Paso, Texas, was among the dead, army spokesman Enrique Torres said.

"It appears drugs were being sold at the place," Torres said of the strip joint. "The hitmen went directly for their victims, no one else."

The suspected drug hitmen escaped the bar easily, while panicking customers fled in their cars as pools of blood gathered around spent bullet cases on the bar floor.



Read more: http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/us-soldier-dies-in-mexico-drug-attack-3113528

[virgogal]

1. Just another fun night in Ciudad Juarez.

[Therellas]

19. just curious what was the dealio

I wondered if it was a fire fight or something.
crazy

[Warpy]

2. It almost sounds like a government hit on dealers

with the US guy being mistaken for somebody else or up to his ears in one of the gangs to make a little money on the side.

It was a precise execution of enemies with no collateral damage. That takes a great deal of discipline.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I respect Reuters but I beg to differ with their title, there was no drug attack.

There was an organized crime attack by hooded gunmen but the drugs didn't do shit, they just laid there.

[Flaneur]

4. Sinaloa cartel is trying to push the Juarez cartel out of Juarez.

Both groups want access to la plaza (the franchise), not only for exports to the US, but also for the burgeoning domestic illicit drug market. More than 2,000 dead there so far this year in the drug wars, compared to about 200 a year in those bucolic days when the Juarez cartel wasn't fighting off competitors.

Soldier was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[amandabeech]

7. The shooter(s) sought out the six men and shot each several times.

The soldier may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the shooter(s) sure seemed to know who he was.

Perhaps he was a known U.S. citizen or perhaps he had been making a little money on the side.

[Flaneur]

9. If I had to guess, I'd guess he was involved in the traffic somehow.

A few Americans have been killed in the drug war down there in the last couple of years, and most of them seem to have been players.

I don't think the cartels are targeting Americans in general. In fact, given the bi-national nature of these crime syndicates, I think it's surprising the violence hasn't really spread north of the river. I suspect there is an unwritten agreement among the factions to limit the killing to their own side of the border in order to not draw even more heat from the gringos.

[RaleighNCDUer]

26. Perhaps a little historical memory of what happens when violence

crosses the border.

We've fought three wars with Mexico - the Texas revolution, the Mexican War ten years later, and the Punitive Expedition in 1916, as a response to Villa's raid on Columbus NM. Villa is still a national hero in Mexico - they won't have forgotten about that.

[C_Lawyer09]

29. Don't Guess

And the violence has spread north of the river and is ever increasing for quite some time now.

[Flaneur]

5. Gotta recommend a great book about the Juarez/El Paso drug wars:

"Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and Juarez," by University of Texas-El Paso anthropologist and sociology Howard Campbell. Just came out. Very illuminating.

[Therellas]

6. why did he get shot?

why was he there?
do we av bases in Mexico now?
lol

[amandabeech]

8. Recently, and I seem to recall that it was in the past year, we sent a bunch of military equipment

and technicians/advisers down to Mexico to help the Mexicans fight the drug dealers.

We'd probably have troops and bases down there if the Mexicans would let us.

[Flaneur]

11. It's a $1.4 billion, three-year anti-drug aid package.

Mexico gets most of it, some goes to the Central American countries.

The Mexicans have no interest in having US bases or troops down there. They're still kinda sore about that Mexican-American War, where we stole half their country. Anti-interventionism is the bedrock of their foreign policy.

[amandabeech]

14. Yes, the Mexicans are very wary of us, and I don't blame them.

Here's a question, though.

Mexico's big oil field, Cantarell is in serious decline. We import or recently imported approximately 1 million barrels a day of mostly Cantarell oil.

When Mexico is no longer able to export much of anything petroleum (and that day could come sooner rather than later), will we still care about what happens there?

Or will our government be interested only to protect the maquilas?

[Johnyawl]

15. Yes, amandabeech, we will still care after their oil is gone

Mexico is a major source of cheap labor, both internal and external, for the US; and our corporate masters need cheap labor as much as they need cheap oil. So yes, we will protect the maquilas, and we will continue to prop up a very corrupt economic/political system that keeps it's citizens impoverished to the point that the border, the INS, and the underground labor market in the US are an attractive alternative to their lives in the land of their birth.

Aside from that, Mexico and the US share a long, very pourous border, and serious social unrest in Mexico will have serious consequences for the US.

[amandabeech]

17. I was hoping for a different answer.

* Sigh *, but thanks for posting.

[AlphaCentauri]

24. after the oil is gone? Gaza Strip II n/t

[a la izquierda]

16. They won't entertain our bases...

and if we tried to impose, all hell would break loose in Mexico. They don't take kindly to foreign invaders.

[amandabeech]

18. See my responses to earlier posters. n/t

[proteus_lives]

10. He was off-duty. Wrong place at the wrong time.

[Flaneur]

12. Maybe not. The story says the six dead were specifically targeted.

Was he involved somehow? That's my guess.

[proteus_lives]

13. He could have just been buying a bag of weed.

But I guess if he was there to purchase drugs he was involved.

[Judi Lynn]

20. Mexico: U.S. Air Force Sergeant Killed in Shooting

Mexico: U.S. Air Force Sergeant Killed in Shooting
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 4, 2009

An off-duty United States Air Force sergeant was among six people killed by masked gunmen early Wednesday in a bar in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, the authorities said. It was not clear what set off the gunfire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for prosecutors in Chihuahua state. But the methods suggested that the shooting involved drug gangs. The Air Force identified the dead service member as Staff Sgt. David Booher, assigned to a base near Alamogordo, N.M.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/americas/05briefs-USAIRFORCESE_BRF.html?_r=1&ref=world

[douglas9]

21. Guess He Missed the Memo

Subject: Travel Policy for Mexico (Prohibition of Travel to Mexican Border Cities and the State of Chihuahua

https://www.bliss.army.mil/bliss_home_files/documents/policy/TravelPolicyforMexico09-001.pdf

[pipoman]

22. I was wondering the same thing..

my son is in San Diego and Tijuana (as well as most of the country) is soooo off limits for US service members.

[Fumesucker]

23. This shit could be ended in a single afternoon with a few signatures..

When was the last time anyone saw a shootout between alcohol distributors?

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

[Kali]

28. ...

:thumbsup:

[Judi Lynn]

25. Personal info. posted on the American killed in Juarez:

Gunmen kill US airman in attack on bar in Mexico
11/5/2009, 2:36 a.m. EST
The Associated Press

~snip~
Staff Sgt. David Booher, assigned to the medical unit of the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Ciudad Juarez, was among those killed in the bar, the U.S. Air Force said.

Earlier this year, the 12th Air Force barred airmen from traveling in Mexico's Chihuahua state. Soldiers from Fort Bliss, just outside El Paso, Texas, across the border from Juarez, also are barred from going to Chihuahua.

http://www.silive.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-18/125742608686400.xml&storylist=international

http://extras.mnginteractive.com.nyud.net:8090/live/media/site561/2009/1104/20091104__news01david1105~1_VIEWER.jpg
Airman killed in Juarez
HAFB Staff Sgt. David Booher one of six shot in Mexican bar
Alamogordo Daily News
By Daniel Borunda,For the Daily News
Posted: 11/05/2009 12:00:00 AM MST

A medic from Holloman Air Force Base may have been attempting to treat wounded victims in a shooting when he was targeted and killed by gunmen inside a Juárez strip club, a friend of the airman said.

Staff Sgt. David Booher, 26, was among six men killed just after midnight Wednesday in the Amadeus strip club, Chihuahua state police and Holloman Air Force Base officials said. Booher was with the 49th Fighter Wing.

The strip club shooting was part of another violent day in Juárez in which at least six other killings took place including four young men who were lined against a wall and executed outside an elementary school.

Booher, who has family in El Paso and Juárez, was on his day off and had gone with friends to Juárez, said his friend Eric Estrada, who was not part of the group.

Estrada, 28, said his friends told him what happened when gunmen burst into the Amadeus, a neon-lit strip club billed as "El Imperio del Placer" (the Empire of Pleasure) on Avenida Ejercito Nacional.

"They (the shooters) went in there acting as federal agents. They told everyone not to move or they would kill them," Estrada said. "Nobody saw exactly how they killed him (Booher) because they were all face down. ... My other friends who were with him think that because he is a combat medic when he moved to try to help someone they shot him."

Estrada described Booher as a likeable guy who because of his military training did not worry about visiting Juárez. Booher's good looks had gotten him a spot as an extra in a "Transformers" movie filmed at Holloman Air Force Base.

More:
http://www.alamogordonews.com/ci_13716695

[Octafish]

27. Sounds like a Medic.

Sgt. Booher died a true hero.