Police: U.S. teens were hit men for Mexican cartel

[babylonsister]

Police: U.S. teens were hit men for Mexican cartel
Ed Lavendera


LAREDO, Texas (CNN) -- Rosalio Reta sits at a table inside a Laredo Police Department interrogation room. A detective, sitting across the table, asks him how it all started.


Gabriel Cardona, who shows his tattooed eyelids, worked as a hit man for a Mexican cartel.


Reta, in Spanish street slang, describes his initiation as an assassin, at the age of 13, for the Mexican Gulf Cartel, one of the country's two major drug gangs.

"I thought I was Superman. I loved doing it, killing that first person," Reta says on the videotape obtained by CNN. "They tried to take the gun away, but it was like taking candy from kid."

Rosalio Reta and his friend, Gabriel Cardona, were members of a three-person cell of American teenagers working as cartel hit men in the United States, according to prosecutors. The third was arrested by Mexican authorities and stabbed to death in prison there three days later.

In interviews with CNN, Laredo police detectives and prosecutors told how Cardona and Reta were recruited by the cartel to be assassins after they began hitting the cantinas and clubs just across the border.

more...

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/12/cartel.teens/

[tridim]

1. Another victim of America's War on (some) Drugs

I hope you're happy Nixon, and every politician since.

[Renew Deal]

2. So...

It's all America's fault, and this murderer is the "victim." Interesting

[tridim]

4. Well no, that's not what I'm saying.

All I'm saying is that prohibition tends to create criminals. We have two solid examples in American history that prove it.

[babylonsister]

3. Are you saying the teens are victims? They

seem like murderers to me, and I don't care what side of the border they're from.

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. Actually, I think many teens ARE victims of the War on drugs

.
.
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A poor kid, with a poor family is offered a chance to help them survive.

Granted, killing people is NOT an acceptable way to do this, but when people are starving, living in hovels, SOME of them will do anything to get out of that situation.

Young people are very impressionable, and indeed are malleable enough to be turned into assassins if their own government can't make their lives at least semi-comfortable.

One has to differentiate what is acceptable, and what is REALITY.

Humans in one respect are like any other creature on the planet -

MOST of us will do anything to survive

I use the word "most" because some of us commit suicide.

I think we are the only creature that deliberately ends our own lives.

When our children turn out to be murderers and thieves,

Then WE as adults; parents and teachers,

Have failed them

That's MHO

[babylonsister]

6. The thing is, we don't know if their excuse is because they were

starving or living in hovels. All I know is they definitely lacked any kind of adult supervision.

Maybe they're just evil and ruthless, and that's what the gang leaders saw in them.

I'm sure kilos of coke helped make them malleable.