Mexican court convicts young cartel hitman

A Mexican soldier guards Edgar Jimenez Lugo on Dec. 2, shortly after his arrest at an airport near Cuernavaca, Mexico. / Photo by Marco Antonio Diaz Sierra


•Elizabeth Jimenez Lugo: Edgar’s sister Elizabeth, 19, is awaiting trial in Mexico on charges of kidnapping in association with organized crime members. Authorities say she carried on a romantic relationship with the drug gang leader accused of recruiting Edgar.

•Lina Ericka Jimenez Lugo: A married mother of a 5-year-old boy, Lina Ericka, 24, was arrested after dropping off Edgar and Elizabeth at an airport near Cuernavaca in December. The Mexican army contends that she knew of her siblings’ gang involvement and helped them anyway. She shares a prison cell with Elizabeth at a high-security lockup outside Cuernavaca. The sisters maintain their innocence.

•Yolanda Lugo Jimenez: Edgar’s mother, Yolanda, 43, was detained on Dec. 6 outside her Logan Heights apartment by Border Patrol agents. She has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to illegally re-entering the country and will likely serve time in prison before being deported to Mexico. Her husband, an undocumented immigrant with no criminal record, was arrested at the same time and returned to Mexico. The couple’s two, elementary school-aged daughters, who were born and raised in the United States, are living with relatives in San Diego.

A San Diego-born teenager was convicted Tuesday of homicide and organized crime charges in the beheadings of four men on behalf of a drug cartel in central Mexico, court officials announced.

A juvenile court judge declared Edgar Jimenez Lugo responsible in the August 2010 killings, which ended with mutilated bodies being strung from a highway bridge in Cuernavaca, a tourist destination just south of Mexico City.

Edgar, who turned 15 in May, was sentenced to three years in juvenile detention, said Juan Carlos Castro Elizondo, a spokesman for the Morelos state juvenile court. That is the maximum sentence, based on Edgar’s age at the time of the crimes, under Mexican laws that aim to rehabilitate young offenders.

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The case confirmed growing fears that Mexican children have become not only victims but also perpetrators of surging drug gang violence as destabilized, feuding cartels scramble to survive a concerted government offensive against them. The savagery of Edgar’s killings also attracted international attention.

And Edgar’s birth in the U.S. to immigrant parents set him apart as well.

“He is an example of the transnationalism of organized crime,” said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. “He is a U.S. citizen. He is caught up in what is truly a shared challenge both for the United States and Mexico.”

Mexican soldiers, who had been looking for Edgar, arrested him and an older sister in December at an airport near Cuernavaca as the two waited for a flight to Tijuana. They were planning to reunite with their mother in San Diego.

Edgar’s father, David Antonio Jimenez Solis, still maintains his son’s innocence. He hopes Edgar will serve his sentence and then make a new start in the United States — for the teen’s own safety.

“He has to do what he can to make a new life for himself,” Jimenez said in a phone interview from Tejalpa, the working-class village on the outskirts of Cuernavaca where Edgar spent most of his childhood.


