MORELIA, Mexico -- A small-town mayor and an aide were found stoned to death Monday in a drug-plagued western state, the fifth city leader to be killed in Mexico since mid-August.

Michoacan state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said the bodies of Tancitaro Mayor Gustavo Sanchez and city adviser Rafael Equihua were discovered in a pickup truck abandoned on a dirt road near the city of Uruapan.

Montejano's spokesman, Jonathan Arredondo, said initially that the victims were hacked to death with a machete, but the attorney general said they were killed with stones.

Arredondo said police were trying to determine a possible motive.

Tancitaro, a town of 26,000 people, is in a region where soldiers have destroyed more than 20 meth labs in the last year and several police officers have been killed by suspected drug gang members.



Last year the city council chief, Gonzalo Paz, was kidnapped, tortured and killed. Then in December, the mayor and seven other town officials resigned saying they had been threatened by drug traffickers and local police were not showing up to work.

Soon after, the department's entire 60-officer force was fired for failing to stop a series of killings and other crimes, and Michoacan state police and soldiers took over security in the town. Sanchez was named mayor in January.

Also Monday in Michoacan, five gunmen and a marine were killed in a shootout in Coahuayana on the Pacific coast, the navy said in a statement. A second marine was wounded, and authorities were searching for more gunmen.

Coahuayana authorities canceled school and warned people to stay indoors.

The navy said another gunbattle across the country in the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas left eight gunmen and one marine dead in the border city of Reynosa.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department said soldiers arrested a man suspected in the kidnapping and killing of the mayor of Santiago in the border state of Nuevo Leon. It said in a statement that Miguel Cervantes was arrested Monday.

In the border state of Chihuahua, gunmen broke into a police complex, subdued the guards and stole at least 40 automatic rifles and 23 handguns, police spokesman Fidel Banuelos said.

Banuelos said 10 officers who were in the building at the time were being questioned. He said it was not clear whether the assailants were members of a drug cartel.

In Ciudad Juarez, a border city in Chihuahua, the Public Safety Department announced the capture of a drug gang member who allegedly helped set up a car bomb that killed three people.

Suspect Jose Contreras allegedly killed a man and dressed him in a police uniform to lure federal agents to the area where the car bomb exploded, killing a federal police officer and a doctor who was helping the shooting victim.

Contreras is a member of La Linea gang, which works for the Juarez drug cartel, the department said in a statement.

Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, has become one of the world's most dangerous cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels.


The Navy? doesn't Mexico have an Army?... seems like the army would be better to kill drug lords and their goons...

very sad, I feel for their families


perhaps US will intervene like we supposedly did in Iraq, to help give them a better way of life and all that,,,,,and get control of their own country


probably help with the illegal immigration issues too

mexican politics is so corrupt that even if we did help, it wouldn't help... at least columbia got some non corrupt people in office after we left.

More proof that Drug Cartels are working with Muslim extremists like AQ, Taliban, Hamas and Hezbullah.

kinda makes me wonder...

yeah..just stop buying drugs from them, that should help...

Didn't think all of their business was in the US......but then again....who else would buy it right? Of course can't go anywhere without the US being blamed for everything......I will state it is a recognized fact the US purchases a majority but why not just say get drug addicts to stop buying it......love your unadulterated hatred of the US......and foriegn news pushes their agendas and propagandas too.....

wow..kind of paranoid..!! Ive never stated that I hate the USA. I dont "blame" the US for "everything", I just point out the situations where the US is involved, its not my fault if it seems to be that the US is "everywhere". And yes, the US is the major buyer of drugs from mexico...legal and illegal...

I realize that but its just seems like all I read is negativity and you see no positives or so it seems.....okay then let me just ask you what positives do you see in the US since pllitical forums remain inherently negative mostly anyways......

Let them kill each other. Mexico is nothing but a piece of **** of a country and its people are all corrupt.

They only get murdered if they are not corrupt enough for the drug lords.

Prime example of what Ive been talking about...

Seems ironic you probably have these same murderers in Mexico skip jumping across the border into the United states to have some idiot like Obama and Pelosi give them welfare and free medical in some sanctuary city.


Anyone ever think we wouldn't be reading about these problems if we had a 60 foot wall along our border with armed guards every 600 feet?

That would make too much sense!! The leftist liberals want as many criminals roaming our streets as possible.

Most people don't realize you can't travel into another country if you have a felony.Imagine how many people(including the gangs and drug dealers)would not be living in America because they were denied entry because of their felony?