WASHINGTON — Dozens of officials from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. agencies joined an investigation Monday into the killings of three people tied to the U.S. Consulate in the Mexican city of Juarez, scrambling to determine whether the slayings marked an escalation in the region’s drug war or were simply cases of mistaken identity, officials said.
Lesley Enriquez, 35, who worked in the consulate’s citizens services section, was believed to be the first American consulate employee to have been killed in apparent Mexican drug violence since 1985, when DEA agent Enrique Camarena was tortured and murdered.
Enriquez and her American husband were gunned down near the Santa Fe bridge into the United States about 2 p.m. Saturday, as their infant daughter cried in the back seat, unharmed but terrified.
About the same time, assailants in a different part of the city killed the husband of a Mexican who works at the consulate.
That victim, identified in Mexican media as Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, had been at the same children’s birthday party as Enriquez and her husband, Arthur Redelfs.
FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons in El Paso, across the border from Juarez, said investigators had not determined the motive for the shootings.
But, she said, “at this point we don’t have any indication the victims were targeted because of their employment at the consulate.”
In a sign of how seriously the Mexican government regards the case, Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez traveled to Juarez on Monday to oversee the investigation, according to El Diario, a newspaper in the city.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon and President Barack Obama expressed indignation at the murders.The U.S. Consulate in Juarez was closed for a Mexican holiday Monday and will remain shut today “to review its security posture,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
At least 18,000 people have been killed in Mexico since December 2006, when Calderon declared war on the country’s drug traffickers. The U.S. government has committed to spending more than $1 billion to assist the Mexican effort.
