Reports: Police Chief Arrested In Connection With Mexican Massacre
Dec 27, 2019, 4:10 PM
In the early November killings, three women and six children from the LeBaron family were gunned down while driving in three cars on a remote dirt road south of the US-Mexico border. (CNN)
(CNN)
MEXICO CITY – A municipal police chief has been arrested for a suspected connection to the massacre of three women and six children in Sonora, Mexico, according to multiple news sources.
Reuters released a report Friday, citing Mexican media outlets that said the police chief of the Janos municipality was suspected of having ties to organized crime in the area.
The man was identified in the report as Fidel Alejandro Villagas.
Nine people were killed and seven others were taken to hospitals in Arizona for treatment.
The shooting happened on November 4 as three vehicles were traveling between Sonora and Chihuahua. Family members said the group was ambushed.
Mexican officials said the suspects were believed to be cartel gunmen. It was unclear if the family members wer specifically targeted or if they drove into the path of a dispute between rival groups.
Reuters reported Villagas was the police chief in Janos, an area within the state of Chihuahua.
The victims were dual U.S.-Mexico citizens, and many had ties to Utah.
KSL spoke with family members soon after the ambush. They said the families knew incidents with the drug cartels were on the rise in Sonora, but never thought this level of violence was possible.
“I actually know all of them. They are my family,” said Trish Cloes,. “There’s no words to describe it. You can’t make any sense of it.”
The children killed were between 10 months to 14-years-old.
