Court records show that the recent kidnapping that turned into a shootout between gunmen and police in the parking lot of a local bank in South Texas has a direct cartel connection. The two gunmen were reportedly carrying out a $150,000 cartel hit placed on the victim.
The shooting took place last week in the border city of Mission, Texas, when local police officers responded to the parking lot of a local IBC bank in regard to a kidnapping in progress. As authorities arrived, the gunmen fired on police officers, setting off a fierce shootout where authorities managed to injure one of the gunmen. One of the responding officers was also injured.
Mission Police has charged 35-year-old Jose Israel Garcia with one count of aggravated kidnapping and one count of aggravated robbery. He currently remains behind bars in lieu of a $1 million bond.
The incident began last week when Garcia allegedly drove from San Antonio to Mission to carry out the kidnapping. According to a report from the local CBS News affiliate, the victim met with one of the kidnappers, who was an old acquaintance, for dinner and then went to a park in Mission. There, the suspect pulled out a gun and told the victim that there was a $150,000 hit on him by the cartel.
The suspect then drove the victim through various cities in the valley and the following day took him to meet Garcia, who, according to Mission Police, has a prior kidnapping conviction and spent 18 years in prison.
While court documents in the case do not identify the criminal organization, the two suspects claim to be affiliated with Los Trevino in Nuevo Laredo. That reference points to the leadership of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas, one of the six Mexican cartels that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
Garcia told the other suspect that he had checked with people from Nuevo Laredo and learned that there was no hit on the victim. The second suspect said that the hit was not ordered from the Mexican side of the border but from someone on the U.S. side.
The two men took the victim to the IBC Bank, where he alerted bank employees to call for help.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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