Borderland Beat
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[police recording of call by Medina in video below]
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In July 2012, Gustavo Lozano, 41, called sheriff’s dispatchers, saying he was a Mexican police officer and that deputies shouldn’t have started a drug investigation against him. Lozano turned himself in to authorities Jan. 16 at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, where he claimed that people in Mexico had tried to kill him. The man sustained several self-inflicted wounds and after further investigation, investigators said his threats were baseless.
A man executed in Reynosa at the hands of members of organized crime has been identified as the same man who had made threats against Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño and deputies serving beneath him.
Mexican authorities in Ciudad Victoria and Reynosa confirmed the body of Roberto Carlos “El Loco” Medina — a member of a violent gang comprising criminal immigrants with ties to Mexican drug cartels — showed signs “consistent with an execution,” but declined to comment further on his slaying.
Treviño said Tuesday that his department was working with the FBI, which was coordinating contact with Mexican authorities to further investigate the death of Medina.
Medina’s body was found by Reynosa municipal authorities Thursday afternoon along a dirt road near Colonia Ernesto Zedillo; the body’s hands had been tied behind its back with a single gunshot wound to the forehead, Treviño said.While the body had a Mexican ID card with the name Jorge Garcia Garcia, the man’s mother is the one who properly identified him in Mexico.
Medina was the same Partido Revolucionario Mexicano gang member connected to Mexican organized crime who in September 2012 had made death threats against Treviño, his family and investigator Alfredo Avila, who had been looking at Medina in connection to a kidnapping case, the sheriff said.
Medina was considered a person of interest in the kidnapping case and had two warrants for his arrest on the charge of making terroristic threats.
Court records show that Medina had also called Avila’s department-issued cellphone to make threats against him and his family. Medina’s relatives declined to comment when contacted Tuesday by The Monitor.
[police recording of call by Medina in video below]
Medina has a lengthy criminal history, including drug charges, robbery, kidnapping and a 1999 capital murder charge that was dismissed for lack of evidence.
The Partido Revolucionario Mexicano gang has been described by authorities as a group of criminal immigrants illegally in the United States with direct ties to Mexican drug cartels and organized criminal syndicates across the border, particularly the Gulf Cartel.
The PRM is the same gang behind the a failed kidnapping attempt on behalf of the Gulf Cartel that led to the shooting of an Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop in October 2011.
The sheriff classified that shooting as the first confirmed case of spillover violence in his county — a departure from prior assertions that drug violence had not crossed north of the Rio Grande — since the kidnapping had been an effort to recover a drug load stolen from the Gulf Cartel.
Mexican authorities have not released any information into Medina’s slaying beyond confirming his death. The case is being undertaken by officials with Tamaulipas’ attorney general, which investigates such homicides.
Medina’s threats were not a unique circumstance for Treviño and his staff in recent years.
Lozano had sold an interview to a show with Univision network, where he claimed to be a hit man for a Mexican cartel and had been behind the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent — a claim the FBI found to be without merit, dismissing the claims in a written statement.
On Jan. 17, Lozano said he had been lying in his statements, and he publicly apologized during his arraignment hearing. He pleaded guilty in April and was sent to jail, but online court records do not specify the length of his sentence.
The Monitor and El Nuevo HeraldoThank you to the reader who sent me the story last night-sorry for the delay in posting