Tijuana: Man executed in gym in La Mesa

Man executed in gym

In the seemingly endless onslaught of violence consuming the colonias of Tijuana, another murder occurred this morning. A man was found with multiple gunshots in the gym "Pitbull" in La Mesa, his name was Jose Carlos Madrid Montiel.  Another victim in a death count that, as summer looms over Baja California has spiraled to nearly 600 killing, 417 in Tijuana, increasing every month since January.  Tijuana will see 1,000 killings or more, by the time there is a chill in the air, and Christmas lights line the city.

This is unprecedented, for a city that has endured years of disarticulated bodies, severed limbs, narco mantas pinned to corpses, bodies swaying across bridges, tongues in plastic bags, while children walk to school, burned bodies dropped, ash staining the concrete beneath them.  Years of violence and insecurity, which began during "The Black Years", as Fernando Sanchez Arellano and Teodoro Garcia Simental savagely tore into each others retail dealers, girlfriends, leaving dozens of victims, innocents among them in their wake. 

Years later, the cards have all shuffled, and the violence remains, even more so then before. The violence is seeped into the concrete of the colonias, the crystal sold cheaper then cigarettes, the weapons imported from the United States, the frigid bodies in the morgue, or still laying across the taxi, their brain matter on the upholstery. The people just want to live a life, the violence is a contagion infecting everyone in it's path, children, who have seen things no one should see.

Today a man is gunned down in a gym. Tomorrow at Calimax.  At the gym, the taco stand, the mariscos bar, the bar, the backseat of a car, bullets, killers, will find their targets in moving vehicles, unloading magazines into 4 door SUV's, tearing lives apart, shattered glass on the seats, shattered lives all around a city of 453 killings. Each bullet traces it's way through a family, through a person, an infection of blood, shell casings, misery and pain. 

Sources: AFN Tijuana, Zeta Tijuana