Yuma resident gunned down in Mexico

A Yuma resident was gunned down Tuesday night in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., in what was at least the third homicide in the city in a little more than a week.

The victim, identified as 25-year-old Jonathan Alberto Torres Ibarra, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he was preparing to get into a parked vehicle at Callejon Felix Contreras and 26th Street, on the city’s northeast side, according to municipal police.

An ambulance brought him across the border to San Luis, Ariz., where he was airlifted from that city’s Joe Orduno Park to Yuma Regional Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital later that night.

Witnesses told police Torres Ibarra was struck multiple times by multiple rounds of a high-powered rifle fired from a moving vehicle shortly before 8:30 p.m. Spent cartridge cases were found at the scene, police said.

Police provided no motives for the slaying.

Torres Ibarra was accompanied by two family members when he was shot, police said. Police identified him as a Yuma resident.

The vehicle from which the shots were fired fled the scene. Two people were seen inside it, police said.

“The victim (was brought across the border) with several bullet wounds — in the chest, in the leg and in the side — but he was still alive when he was transferred to the helicopter,” said Luis Cebreros, spokesman for the San Luis, Ariz., Fire Department. “We couldn’t transfer him because all of our ambulances were busy at the time.”

The killing comes on the heels of two homicides in which the victims’ bodies were then burned.

One is believed to be that of Daniel Cortez Castro, a municipal police officer in San Luis Rio Colorado who disappeared after leaving his home early the morning of March 5. A charred body believed to be his was found later in the day in a burned vehicle in the desert south of the city.

The vehicle belonged to Cortez Castro, although police this week still had not publicly confirmed the identity of the victim.

A day later, the charred body of an unidentified male was found inside a home under construction in San Luis Rio Colorado. That victim, believed to have been shot before being burned, also has not been identified.

Both of the two previous slayings remain under investigation.