Did Mexican Authorities Cover Up Killing of Passerby in Gun Battle?

Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas and Coahuila to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Reynosa. 

REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Residents in this border city claim that a man who was killed last week during a gun battle between Mexican authorities and cartel gunmen was not a criminal as authorities labelled him. Instead, he was a man who inadvertently drove through a gun battle.

The shootout took place last Friday early morning when, according to information released by the Tamaulipas government, a group of Mexican marines was attacked by cartel gunmen. The attack set off a short but fierce gun battle that ended with the cartel gunmen fleeing. According to the Tamaulipas government, one of the gunmen identified as Oscar Eduardo Ortega Rodriguez died in the clash.  However, residents in this border city claim that Ortega was not a gunman but in fact he was an innocent victim mistaken for a cartel gunman.

Friends and relatives claim that Ortega had spent much of the night drinking at a friends house and he was driving back home when he drove through the scene of the shootout. 

Just two days after the gun battle, dozens of residents from this border city lined up outside of the local Attorney General’s Office (PGR) protesting Ortega’s death and the government’s framing of the man as a criminal. Protesters claim that Ortega was framed by authorities in order to not be blamed for having shot an innocent bystander.

In recent years the Mexican government has become famous for covering up multiple cases such as the extermination and incineration of hundreds of innocent victims in the border state of Coahuila and the disappearance of 43 education students in the border state of Guerrero. In the border city in Tamaulipas, news outlets and protesters have often cried foul at the request of organized crime. The history of news outlets and protests in Tamaulipas wrongly blaming authorities places shadows of doubt on what may legitimate claims of a cover-up.

In late 2014, Mexican news outlets blamed the police of the border city of Matamoros for the murder of a woman and her two brothers from Progreso, Texas. In fact the three relatives and a fourth man had been killed over an internal money dispute within the Gulf Cartel.