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Nogales restaurant is scene of execution

NOGALES, Sonora - A reputed drug kingpin facing federal charges in Tucson was shot to death execution-style at a crowded restaurant in this city. Luis Enrique López Martinez was killed Sunday night as he was paying his bill at Las Herraduras Restaurant, a popular place for businesspeople from both sides of the border. A companion was also shot and died later. The slayings come at a time when U.S. officials are warning Americans about the dangers of escalating border violence in Mexico that is linked to drug traffickers. Nicknamed " El Topo," which means "The Mole," López Martinez was facing a 21-count indictment under the drug kingpin statute of continuing to run a criminal enterprise, said Anthony J. Coulson, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Tucson office. The charges stem from a July 2002 federal court indictment filed in Tucson alleging that 21 people had moved more than 2 tons of cocaine through Nogales to buyers in New York, Massachusetts and California. "He has been a major target both in Sonora and Arizona," Coulson said. Sonoran state police and witnesses say the execution-style shooting happened this way: López Martinez had finished his dinner with about 10 other men at a table in Las Herraduras. He walked to the cash register to settle the tab when an unidentified gunman walked up to him and shot him in the back of the head, said Commander Raúl Guillén Rodríguez, of the Sonoran State Judicial Police in Nogales. The gunman turned to leave, and as he did, he shot López Martinez's companion, Carlos Raul Fonkie, in the chest and stomach, said restaurant manager Jesus Manuel Acuña Padilla. Five shots were fired from a 9 mm handgun. The restaurant was crowded at the time. López Martinez crumpled to the floor, dead. Fonkie died at a hospital from his wounds. The gunman ran away down the railroad tracks just outside the restaurant and got into a stolen white Volkswagen Jetta, then drove away toward a colonia in southern Nogales, said Guillén Rodríguez. The gunman doused the car with gasoline and tried to set it on fire but was unsuccessful, he said. The case remains under investigation, and nobody has been arrested, he said. It is still not known who ordered the killing of López Martinez, he said. The DEA says López Martinez worked for drug boss Hector Leyva in the cocaine trafficking ring busted up in 2002. It was not known if he was working for one of the larger drug trafficking organizations in the area. In 2002, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court, López Martinez was among 21 people indicted after federal investigators seized 716 pounds of cocaine, 810 pounds of marijuana, 25 pounds of methamphetamines and $2.4 million from a warehouse in the Bronx, N.Y. The investigation began in New Jersey, stretched to Los Angeles, then led to Nogales, Ariz. Delivery trucks that transported plastic products also were being used to move the drugs, authorities said. López Martinez was charged with four counts of possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Several other defendants in the case have pleaded guilty, and others are scheduled for trial this spring. The group smuggled drug loads across the U.S.-Mexican border, stored them in Tucson and Nogales, Ariz., then shipped them across the country in vehicles with hidden compartments, the indictment says. A federal grand jury in Tucson handed up the indictment on July 31, 2002, but it was not unsealed until Aug. 26, 2002. In March 2004, López Martinez was reportedly kidnapped in Sonora and escaped. Who kidnapped him was never reported. The slayings follow a travel warning from the U.S. State Department for the northern Mexico border states. U.S. officials have expressed concern for U.S. visitors as drug battles play out from Matamoros, south of Texas, to Tijuana, south of California.