Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Hand grenades become key weapon in arsenal of Mexican drug cartels

Grenade stuffed with written threat
There’s a new terror in the vast, violent stockpiles of drug barons in Mexico: the hand grenade. Authorities on both sides of the U.S-Mexico border say the weapon of war is being lobbed by drug runners to protect their shipments and to terrorize residents into remaining quiet about their loads. Four live grenades were found in a rural home earlier this month near Texas’ Rio Grande City, where three Hondurans were found murdered. “I can’t even remember the last time we saw a grenade at a crime scene,” Starr County Sheriff’s Capt. Carlos Delgado recently told The Brownsville Herald. In the border town of San Juan, Texas, the ATF began helping local police in 2009 after a sting operation resulted in the arrest of a man who sold nearly 200 grenades to an undercover federal agent posing as a drug cartel member. “The reason you’re seeing so many more (grenades) this year is because much more heavily armed drug shipments are coming into the United States,” said James Phelps, an assistant professor of security at Angelo State University in Texas, according to Fox News. Grenades are also used to intimidate and threaten residents into remaining quiet about narcotics shipments, human trafficking and other crimes blatantly committed in rural, lawless areas of Mexico, authorities said...more

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