Man arrested as Mexico cartel leader once lived in Yakima County

A man who Mexican authorities say is a leader in a violent drug cartel responsible for the deaths of more than 200 people once lived in Yakima County in the Tieton area, friends and acquaintances said Tuesday.

The man, identified as 34-year-old Martin Omar Estrada Luna, was arrested Saturday by the Mexican navy. Several other suspected members of Los Zetas drug cartel also were arrested.

Friends and acquaintances in the Yakima Valley say the man who was paraded before the Mexican media Sunday had plenty of run-ins with authorities here before being deported.

They and local law-enforcement officials said Tuesday the Estrada they knew was headed for trouble at a young age. He dropped out of school and took up a life of crime.

"Martin made his own choices. He went where the streets took him," said a close boyhood friend who works in Yakima and asked not to be identified.

"A career criminal"

Tieton Police Chief Jeff Ketchum said he has known Estrada since Ketchum started working for the Police Department in 1994, about a year after Estrada started racking up his first criminal charges in juvenile court.

"I would label Martin as a career criminal. He got away with a lot of stuff. He got named in a lot of stuff, but you could never pin it on him," Ketchum said.

Mexican authorities arrested Estrada in a house Saturday in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the state of Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico. But acquaintances and police officials question whether Estrada could have risen to a post as high in the cartel as Mexican authorities allege.

Mexican authorities, who put up a $1.2 million bounty for his arrest, said Estrada was one of the leaders of the Zetas' San Fernando cell, which they blame for killing more than 200 people found in mass graves in Tamaulipas.

Authorities there began uncovering bodies in mass graves in early April after reports that passengers were being pulled off buses at gunpoint in the township of San Fernando.

There has been speculation that the Zetas gang was forcibly recruiting extra members for its fight against the rival Gulf cartel over access to key drug-trafficking routes into the United States.

As of last week, 145 bodies had been found in 26 graves. San Fernando is the same place where 72 Central and South American migrants were found slaughtered last August.

It was unclear when Estrada, who was last deported in 2009, would have built such strong ties to one of Mexico's leading drug gangs.

"I can't see it, but who knows? I don't know what the investigation part of it established," Ketchum said.

Local records show Estrada falling into the gang life instead of making it to school with any regularity.

Acquaintances said he left the Highland School District well before he would have graduated in 1995. That year, he pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary in connection with the theft of a Ford Taurus from the district.

Ketchum said Estrada openly admitted to being a gang member, and court records show "El Kilo" as his nickname in the 1990s. The friend said Estrada picked up the nickname from a fragment of a lyric in a rap song by the late rapper Eazy-E.

Besides the burglary charge, his adult felony convictions in Yakima County involved a burglary and brandishing a knife in Tieton.

When he was sentenced in 2006 for an immigration violation, federal prosecutors pointed out that he had amassed 16 felony and misdemeanor convictions.

Records show he has multiple aliases, including Estrada-Delamora, the name he was charged under in federal court.

"Mr. Estrada-Delamora has not learned how to live in society without preying on others," an assistant U.S. attorney wrote in a request for a higher sentence.

Estrada was ultimately sentenced to 41 months for returning to the United States a third time after being deported twice before.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Tuesday that he was deported in 2009 from Reno, Nev., after completing his sentence.

The ICE database shows no contact with Estrada since that deportation.

Family still in state

However, the friend of Estrada's said that the last time they had contact, Estrada was living in Laredo, Texas, just across the border from Nuevo Laredo.

The friend said he encouraged Estrada to be a good person and to reconnect with his young daughters, who live in the Yakima Valley.

Estrada's ex-wife, who also lives in the Yakima area, declined to comment Tuesday. Other relatives could not be reached or did not respond to messages.

Regardless of his history and the accusations against him, the friend said Estrada had another side to him.

"He was a nice guy. He would let you borrow money, his car or his clothes," the man said.

But he said Estrada always wanted to be a leader, not a follower.

Ketchum said he occasionally checked a MySpace account believed to be Estrada's. Pictures there show a heavily tattooed Estrada, consistent with the memories of Ketchum and a Yakima County sheriff's deputy who once arrested him.

 

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600 people marched to New Scotland Yard to call for a public inquiry into Smiley Culture's death.

A crowd of around 600 people marched to New Scotland Yard to call for a public inquiry into Smiley Culture's death.

The reggae singer, whose real name was David Emmanuel, died of a single stab wound through the heart after four Metropolitan Police officers executed a search warrant at his home in Surrey on 15 March.

His family has been told he stabbed himself while making a cup of tea despite the presence of officers in his home. Smiley Culture's family responded to the police explanation of his death, calling it "bizarre".

Smiley Culture's nephew, Merlin Emmanuel, said the singer's funeral had been held on Friday.

Speaking to Channel 4 News he said: "(The) facts are Smiley died whilst under their custody, they had a duty of care to protect my uncle. They failed miserably. As a consequence you would expect at least a letter of condolence from the police force."

What I do know... is that Smiley would still be alive had they not gone and executed that warrant at his house.
Merlin Emmanuel

He added: What I do know beyond reasonable doubt is that Smiley would still be alive had they not gone and executed that warrant at his house. I have my ideas as to what happened but of course its speculative 'cause I wasn't there.

 

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legislation is targeting the Arellano Feliz, Beltran Leyva, La Familia Michoacana, Los Zetas and Sinaloa and Gulf cartels — the most violent and successful cartels in Mexico.

Drug cartels may find themselves in even more trouble than normal if new legislation in Congress passes.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, introduced a bill Wednesday that, if passed, will designate six top Mexican cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

If the cartels are indeed labeled terrorist organizations, the US State Department would be able to charge drug and gun traffickers with supporting terrorism. According to McCaul spokesman Mike Rosen, this is the first time any member of Congress has tried to designate what the cartels are doing as acts of terrorism.

The legislation is targeting the Arellano Feliz, Beltran Leyva, La Familia Michoacana, Los Zetas and Sinaloa and Gulf cartels — the most violent and successful cartels in Mexico. The war on drugs has already claimed nearly 35,000 lives since 2006.

The proposal is more than just a new title — the distinction would allow prosecutors to tack on 15 years to any conviction of providing aid or supplies to cartels. It would also level a federal death sentence against any cartel action that results in death.

McCaul recognizes that cartel actions are not religiously motivated, but said in the Chronicle that the organizations are routinely found “using similar tactics to gain political and economic influence,” as well as utilizing “kidnappings, political assassinations, attacks on civilian and military targets, taking over cities and even putting up checkpoints in order to control territory and institutions.”

Frankly, any label that can be used to stop the cartel’s criminal operations is fine. Label them terrorists, mafiosos, drug traffickers — the end result is the same.

To put the cartel’s 35,000 death count into perspective, that’s more than 7 times the casualties the US has sustained in the Iraq war — and the cartels have racked it up in half the amount of time America has spent overseas.

McCaul seems to have the right idea. If a label is what’s needed to crack down on the violence south of the border, then a label is what Congress should provide.

 

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