Father & Son Found Tied & Executed in Brownsville, Texas Public Park

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

A passerby discovered the bodies of two men – now identified as Ines Cruz, 49, and his son Manuel Cruz, 24 – Wednesday on Old Port Isabel Road, east of Lomo Alta Lake.

Authorities said both men had gunshot wounds to their heads and that their legs and hands were bound with rope. There was tape over their mouths and black T-shirts over their heads.“They (T-shirts) were tied over their heads. It appears to be execution-style. It appears to be organized criminal activity,” said Mary Esther Sorola, Cameron County justice of the peace Precinct 2, Place 3, who pronounced the men dead. It’s unknown if the men are Mexican nationals or U.S. citizens.

The sheriff’s department received a call at about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday about two men sleeping on the side of the road, Sheriff Eric Garza said. When the deputies arrived at the scene – off of old Port Isabel Road – they found the victims.

Garza said authorities believe the men were killed at another location and that their bodies were dumped at the location. The sheriff said it’s believed the men had not been dead that long since investigators were able to move the fingers of the victims to get fingerprints. “They weren’t there that long. We are thinking they were there a couple of hours,” Garza said.

Sorola said she was called out to the scene at about 3:05 p.m. Upon inspecting the victims, she said one appeared to have suffered two gunshot wounds to the head while the other had been shot once in the head.

“It did seem fresh. It didn’t appear that they had been there that long,” she said.

Garza said anyone with information pertaining to the men’s death to contact the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department Crime Stoppers hotline at (956) 350-5551.

Brownsville is north of the border from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, the birthplace of the Gulf Cartel. The region has a long history of being one of the busiest drug smuggling corridors. While local politicians claim the region is safe using cherry-picked crime stats, there have been numerous cases of cartel-connected cross-border violence in the past.

Earlier this month, as reported by Borderland Beat, federal authorities re-arrested Osiel Cardenas Guillen Jr., the son of the jailed kingpin by the same name who was the supreme leader of the Gulf Cartel. The younger Cardenas was living in Brownsville under supervised release after pulling a gun at a bar and claiming to be a U.S. federal agent in 2018. Since his release from detention, Cardenas was involved in violent assaults at bars and incidents of road rage, where he would allegedly use his family name to threaten motorists.

In August, a group of men shot a 23-year-old man on the 5400 block of Boca Chica Boulevard, causing him to crash his vehicle. The victim died at the scene. Months later, federal authorities were able to apprehend three men tied to the murder, which is linked to drug trafficking and organized crime, local news outlets reported at the time.

In previous years, several Gulf Cartel top lieutenants have been arrested in Cameron County, including Brownsville.


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