CHANDLER, Ariz. (AP) - Authorities have determined a man who was stabbed and beheaded in a suburban Phoenix apartment was killed for stealing drugs from a Mexican cartel, in a gruesome example of drug cartel violence spilling over the border.
Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy stole 400 pounds of marijuana from the cartel, which sent men to kidnap and kill him, according to a Chandler police report released Wednesday.
But the house wasn't Cota-Monroy's and he fled, leading the cartel to hire assassins to go to Arizona, befriend Cota-Monroy and kill him.
Cota-Monroy's body was found Oct. 10 in a Chandler apartment—his severed head a couple of feet away.
"It was a very gruesome scene," Chandler police Detective David Ramer said Wednesday. "Anytime you see a headless body stabbed multiple times, obviously that's gruesome. And this is a message being sent—not only are they going to kill you but they're going to dismember your body, and `If you cross us, this is what happens.'"
Police said the cartel Cota-Monroy stole from is known as the PEI-Estatales/El Chapo drug trafficking organization. One man, Crisantos Moroyoqui, has been charged in the killing, and three others are believed to have fled to Mexico.
The other suspects were identified as Jose David Castro Reyes, 25; Isai Aguilar Morales, 22, and a man between the ages of 20 and 27 known only by the nickname "El Joto," a derogatory Spanish term for a gay man.
The U.S. has seen extensive cross-border violence tied to drug trafficking. In one example from 2009, members of a group of Mexican drug traffickers were indicted in the murders of nine people in the San Diego area—including two victims whose bodies were dissolved in acid.
But Tony Payan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has done extensive research on border violence, has said the Arizona case could be the only known beheading in the U.S. carried out by a drug cartel.
Decapitations are a regular part of the drug war in Mexico as cartels fight over territory. Headless bodies have been dangled from bridges by their feet; severed heads have been sent to victims' family members and government officials; and bags of up to 12 heads have been dropped off in high-profile locations.
More than 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico in drug-related violence since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers to battle the cartels in their strongholds.
Breitbart
