Gun lost by ATF used in Mexican chief ’s slaying
Firearms from the Fast and Furious program may now be in the hands of drug cartels deep in the country.
WASHINGTON — A high-powered rifle lost in the ATF’s Fast and Furious controversy was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco this year, according to internal Department of Justice records, suggesting that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico.
Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol vehicle and opened fire. Also killed was one of his bodyguards. His wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.
Local authorities said eight suspects in their 20s and 30s were arrested after police seized them nearby with a cache of weapons — rifles, grenades, handguns, helmets, bulletproof vests, uniforms and special communications equipment. The area is a hot zone for rival drug gangs, with members of three cartels fighting over turf in the region.
A WASR, the semiautomatic rifle that killed the chief, was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Co., a gun store in Glendale, Ariz. The notation on the Department of Justice trace records said the rifle was used in a “homicide — willful — kill — pub off — gun,” code for “homicide, willful killing of a public official, gun.”
Hundreds of firearms were lost in the Fast and Fu- rious operation.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed illegal purchasers to buy the firearms at the Lone Wolf store in the Phoenix suburb and other gun shops in hopes of tracing them to Mexican cartel leaders.
The rifle used in Jalisco was bought Feb. 22, 2010, about three months into the Fast and Furious operation, by 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo of Phoenix. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, making false statements and smuggling goods from the United States and was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Court records show Montelongo personally obtained at least 109 firearms during Fast and Furious. How the rifle ended up in Jalisco — a state deep in central Mexico that includes the country’s second-largest metropolis, Guadalajara — remained unclear.
After the shooting in Jalisco, local officials said some of the suspects confessed to two other shootouts in the area, including one that left seven people dead, all part of the continuing feud by rival cartel mem- bers.
The ATF declined to discuss the matter; officials said they were still compiling an inventory of all the lost firearms for a complete account of the Fast and Furious operation.
Instead of being tracked, almost all the weapons were lost as they f looded across the border into Mexico.
In all, some 211 people have been killed or wounded by Fast and Furious weapons in Mexico, according to Mexican authorities.
On this side of the border, a Fast and Furious weapon was found at the Arizona scene where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was slain in 2010.
Terry’s slaying set off a number of investigations in Washington into Fast and Furious and led to the firing or demotion of many ATF officials. It also led the Republican-controlled House to find Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over a number of Fast and Furious records sought by the House Oversight Committee.