I have recently received three Emails recently regarding four hijackings and assaults on HWY 1D/Bulevar International. Two apparently occurred on the border road between the San Ysidro border crossing and the toll booth near Playas de Tijuana (K10 on hwy 1D). Another occurred on the northbound lane of the HWY 1D toll road between San Marino and Real del Mar (K19.5 - K23). Also, the third Email describes a Tijuana policeman setting up an ATM machine sting when a group of American surfers, who had just been carjacked, approach him for assistance.
I have a couple of questions regarding the hijacking on the toll road (Real del Mar-San Marino): Since the Tijuana and Rosarito police departments seem to be engaged in a procedural dance around the jurisdiction issue, why haven't the Federal highway police been contacted? Isn't HWY 1D their jurisdiction? Or, is there some arcane point of Mexican law of which I am unaware?
The Tijuana police evidently are unable to enforce any sort of law enforcement functionality on Bulevar International (Zona Rio/el Mirador areas) since there were two hijackings there within a short period of time. In addition, they are apparently continuing to fleece down American tourists. Does anyone know of any steps being taken to correct that issue? If Mexican law enforcement officials are going to roll over for the Mexican border gangs there, those of us traveling south of Playas must choose alternate routes.
It should be noted that once the Mexican Army outpost on that route was vacated, the hijackings began. Are the Tijuana police of any use whatsoever? Perhaps they should just stay home.
It could be inferred, from the description of these incidents, that the same gang was involved in each of the carjackings. I wonder if it is the same bunch that ambushed the State Police chief recently?
The first letter is from a local resident
This morning, Friday August 24, 2007, at 5:20AM, my husband was driving on the Toll Road towards San Diego from Rosarito ; and a car, possibly a Chevy Caprice or a Ford Crown Victoria (it was a big sedan, with police lights, red and blue, mounted on the rear-view mirror, with flashing headlights---as it was dark, he couldn't tell what color the vehicle was) followed him and stopped him at San Marino.
Since my husband was driving a little over the speed limit, he thought it was the Federal Police that was going to give him a citation. As soon as he stopped, another car, silver-colored (this one was illuminated by the lights from his vehicle), similar to a Dodge Neon, pulled up in front of him impeding his escape.
Two men who were riding in the small car, not in uniform, shoved a gun at my husband's face (32 caliber, semi-automatic), at the same time that the individuals in the vehicle behind ours got out of their car. There were about 4 or 5 of them in that vehicle and they were not uniformed either. He saw 3 with guns but doesn't know if the other men (a total of 7) were armed or not.
They dragged my husband out of his car, hit him, threw him in the back seat on the floor while they were hitting him in the back, as two men were holding his wrists and another man was going through his pockets, taking also his watch and two rings, including his wedding band. He had $450US and about $950Pesos, his American Passport, his reading glasses which he had hanging from his t-shirt, his wallet with the driver's license, credit cards, etc., the two cell phones.
All of this was happening while one of the men started driving my husband's car, still going North. They stopped about 5 miles later, on the shoulder right past the Real del Mar exit, where they threw him out of the car violently without giving him a chance to get his feet out from under him, but he was able to hold on to the security rail and pushed himself to the other side of the rail, landing in a ditch; this avoided them running him over with the back tires.
From there he saw them take off in his car and all its contents: his FM3, backpack, including a couple of high-amount checks in US Dollars, other belongings
Then my husband walked, as well as he could muster, up the hill to the Marriott where he called me and the Police Departments in Rosarito as well as in Tijuana, giving them the report.
They told him that a patrol car from Tijuana would go to the Marriott to talk to him. 45 minutes later my husband called the Tijuana Police back and they informed him that no patrol car was going to the Marriott and that he would have to report the carjacking to the Ministerio Publico. Since he was stopped in Rosarito proper, but dumped in Tijuana proper, it's going to have to be reported to both municipalities.
As soon as my husband called me I contacted dear friends of ours who live at Real del Mar and he went to keep him company and drove him home.
I called our car insurance company, and they were very helpful. They immediately sent an adjuster to our home and he left us a list of the documentation required to report the carjacking to all the entities, giving us directions on how to get there. We are very thankful to them for their quick response and to their adjuster, Mr. Raul Josua Lima Castillo for his excellent assistance at this horrendous occasion.
We are now mired in calling insurance companies, banks, cell phone companies, etc. to report the theft, and will start the long road to all the governmental offices: the Ministerio Publico, Municipal Police, Fiscal Police, Federal Police, and California Highway Patrol for we had California plates.
When I called our Rosarito bank, I was informed that last week the same thing happened to other clients of theirs, around 2AM on the free road to Tijuana.
I've had the pleasure of meeting our new Municipal President, Mr. Hugo Torres, and I would like to notify him of this outrage and ask him that something be done to avoid these scary thefts during his Administration.
We are very thankful to God that these men didn't shoot or kill my husband.
Thank you,
Name withheld
Message # 2:
-----Original Message -----
From: MexicoVisitor Group
To: mexicoexpo@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday,
September 05, 2007 3:57 PM
Subject: Affecting Baja Tourism
Greetings Everyone:
Sorry to send a group email, but as you all know I have many contacts with both people in Baja
California and visitors to the peninsula from the Baja Talk Radio show and the websites I
promote. I received two disturbing emails within a week of each other from people on my Mexico mailing list.
Since all of your are important promoters of Baja California, I thought you should be aware of these two recent emails I received. I assume they are true as I have heard from other email contacts about these events happening recently.
If you are already aware of this, sorry for the extra email. I haven't seen it in the press, but it could affect tourism in Baja.
These are two separate, scary incidents that happened this summer and will impact tourism. Neither person wants their information put out so you have to take it for what it's worth. Again, I can not verify if they are true, but I would rather be cautious and send you the information.
Well I've been traveling Baja all of my life and I've finally had to witness the worst...
At 3:00am we had just crossed the Border at Tijuana, My buddy and myself in my F350 and two other guys in their small Chevy Pu. I was the lead car. Just as we were going up the steep hill along the border fence I noticed that the other truck was getting pulled over.. So I slowed at came to a stop just up the road. Seconds later a grey Ford Explorer No plates pulled in front of my truck. Two men quickly got out of the car guns drawn coming towards me...I quickly hit the gas and was able to get out of there..It seems that they chased us for a short time but never caught us.. We eventually got far enough away where we felt safe(kinda) and my phone rang.. My wife had the other guys on the phone and they were completely robbed all the way down to their wedding rings..Luckily they had family just blocks away and were safe and on the way to the border(without Truck)..
Please be careful, my father in law works in TJ for the PGR and according to him this is not an isolated incident in this area.. But the good news is none have been reported in daylight hours so please be smart..IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.
Email #3:
The following is an excerpt from a recent article in "Surfer Magazine."
The incident Occurred on August 31, 2007.
The entire article appears at URL:
<http://surfermag.com/features/onlineexclusives/carjackedmexicobaja/> (September 9, 2007)
They crossed the border at 4:30 a.m. and preceded toward the toll road, driving along the well-worn road that hugs the border and then climbs the steep hill toward the Tijuana beaches, the bullring and coastal destinations further south. It is the road that everyone who has ever traveled into Northern Baja has been on. And the guys were fired up and optimistic as they followed the road south and descended less than half a mile from the USA/Mexico border. Then the blue lights hit their rear view mirror. Cops.
They were being pulled over. "This stuff comes with the territory," explained Roger. "Duke and I didn't feel the least bit apprehensive; pay the cop for whatever bullshit reason he comes up with and move on. Good surf awaited." The three surfers knew the drill; this area is notorious for the $40 Mexican cop shakedown. Duke, who was driving the Honda Ridgeline and leading the two-truck caravan handed all his cash to Roger--except for $40 to pay-off the cop.
"Open the door, " the cop said to Roger as he rolled down the passenger window. A handgun pointed at Roger's eyes. "Open the f-ing door," the cop said a second time as he slammed the gun against Roger's right temple, reached in and pulled the door open.
As this unfolded, Walt, in the truck behind them and doing his duty as back driver in the caravan, pulled over behind Duke's Honda Ridgeline and watched in the still, dusky light. 'It immediately looked strange to me," explained Walt. "The cops came out of their truck with their guns drawn. My first thought is that they were looking for drugs. I thought this wasn't going to be a situation where we get out of it with a bribe."
Within a minute there were two other cops/thugs all over Walt, demanding that he get out of the truck, before simply reaching in and unlocking the door.
In the meantime Roger, the passenger in the front vehicle, was being dragged out of the truck by his shirt at gunpoint. The Mexican carjacker was wearing a cut-off black wetsuit ski mask. "I offered the guy my wallet, " explained Roger. "At this point I knew this was serious and I offered him everything we had, the car our money, everything."
While this transpired Duke the driver of the Ridgeline also had a gun to his head and was being lead out of the car.
With a black semi-automatic gun to his head, Roger was led to the roadside guardrail by the masked man and into a dark, open lot with a formidable cliff 30 yards away.
Again Roger tried to reason with carjacker. "Take my money," he said and handed him the $200 Duke had given him earlier. The carjacker directed Roger further into the darkness. Roger was getting closer to the cliff and deeper into the darkness. Again he tried to fend off the attacker with money. "I reached into my second pocket and threw a wad of cash at him," explained Roger. "The $240 I had for the trip. It fell to the ground and the attacker looked down, grabbed a wad full and left the stray twenty dollar bills. He looked down at the remaining bills--$60 or $80 dollars-then looked at me, jerked me forward again. He wasn't interested."
Again Roger pleaded with the man to leave him alone. The attacker's dark brown eyes stared at Roger and then twitched. "I think he was high-- on coke or something," explained the Roger. "His eyes were twitching. The man then continued to lead me further away from the others, into the darkness."
All sorts of thoughts raced through Roger's head. "I wondered if I should run. Would he shoot me? I was living in the moment. Instinct drove me, for better or for the worse."
At the edge of the 100-foot cliff the man stopped Roger and stared him down. Below was darkness--a 100-foot cliff, trash and debris. Roger stood facing the street, his back against the pending overhang.
Meanwhile Walt, in the truck behind Duke and Roger, was dealing with his own nightmare. "One of the Mexicans jumped in next to me pushed his cocked gun into my face pushing my head onto the dashboard," explained Walt. The cops or carjackers or Federales --nobody is really sure what they were or are--demanded that Walt get out. "The thug on the passenger side grabbed my shirt and put me over the road-side guardrail," explained Walt. The Mexican forced Walt's head over the guardrail and cocked the gun against the back of his head. Walt was waiting to die. Walt glanced up and out of the corner of his eye saw Roger down on his knees over by the cliff with a gun pointing on him.
"That's when I thought, 'I'm not going to let this guy shoot me here,'" explained Walt. "It wasn't a heroic action by any means. I just wanted to move out, so I pushed myself up off the guardrail and started walking toward the big ravine that divides the USA from Mexico.
That's really when I thought, this is it, my life was over." Walt figured the Mexican thug was going to shoot him in the back. After five feet or so, and without hearing from the man holding a gun to his back, Walt started jogging in a zigzag motion toward the cliff, hoping that if the attacker did start firing his gun, perhaps he would miss him. His plan was to jump off the cliff; at
least he had half a chance that way.
The masked attacker that held Roger at gunpoint ordered him to get on his hands and knees and crawl down the cliff. It wasn't a straight drop, but more of a steep incline. Roger groveled down until he found a ledge. He stood and looked up at the mask.
"It was dark, but I could see. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. It would be light in about an hour,' explained Roger. "The masked man stood there, with the gun pointed at my chest, both hands on the grip. I was now looking up, maybe five feet below his feet."
The mask looked to his left as if awaiting a signal from the other thugs. He again stared down Roger and again turned to his left. This time he took his right hand off the handle and pulled the barrel forward and then back, cocking the gun. He inserted a bullet. The gun was now pointed down directly at Roger's chest. The man in the mask turned and shot the gun, just above horizon towards the street. He said something, which Roger couldn't make out and jogged slowly towards the vehicles.
Roger looked over to his left and saw Walt hunched over some twenty yards away. The two saw each other, said nothing. After waiting 30 seconds, maybe a minute, Roger and Walt ascended the cliff. "This cliff is a big cliff, and it's right on the border and as it got light we could see America on one side and we're in Mexico,"explained Roger. "We were just sort of freaking out. It was surreal. They could have easily killed us and no one would have known. The two walked up to their friend Duke and the three said nothing. They were in shock. But at least it was over.
Or so they thought.
There was van across the street, an older model van. Beat up. Rickety. Broken down. The kind of vehicle you often see in Mexico.
There next to the van was its owner, an old Mexican man. The three surfers yelled out to the old man in Spanish and he acknowledged that he saw the entire ambush. "He said he was scared for us, but that he could do nothing because of his age," explained Roger. "We ran over to him and the man opened up the sliding door of his van and Duke and I immediately jumped in, but
Walt was adamant about not getting in this guys' van. "The last thing I wanted to do was get in some strangers old van," explained Walt. "It didn't feel right."
Walt eventually acquiesced and reluctantly hopped in the van. The old man closed the van door and the three surfers looked at each other anxiously like, 'was this a good idea?' Their sole focus was to get to the border, and this vehicle was going to get them there.
At this point Roger notices that there is a young man in his 20's sitting in the passenger seat. "The fact that a younger guy was in the passenger seat which sort of freaked us a bit," explained Walt. "After getting carjacked at gunpoint by Federales we didn't really trust anyone."
The old man turned over the engine in his van and it immediately started up. "I thought it was supposed to be broken," explained Roger. "So I start thinking was this guy involved. It was very weird."
The old man, the three surfers and the van start rolling down the hill, with the USA on their left and the sun rising brightly. At the bottom of the hill where the street next to the border fence flattens out, and less than a half mile from the carjacking, a Tijuana Police officer had pulled over a truck. A flat bed truck. The kind of flatbed truck that you tow other trucks with.
The three surfers tell the old man to stop his van. "We got out of the van to tell the cop about our carjacking incident," explained Walt. The cop then did something rather unusual. He picked up his cell phone and made a call. He didn't use his official police communications radio installed on his police truck. "I didn't think much about it at the time, but thinking back on it, it seems strange," explained Roger.
The three American surfers asked the officer to take them immediately to the border to file a report of the incident. "The cop tells us to get in the back of his police truck and we thought we were going to the border," explains Roger.
But to the surfers dismay the policeman turns onto Avenida Revolucion into the seediest part of Tijuana and pulls over. The surfers demand that he take them straight to the border.
The cop refuses. He suggests they get some cash (Duke still had a hidden credit card) from the ATM machine and hire a taxi to take them to the border. By this time the surfers are nervous, restless, and paranoid. They ask the TJ police officer to please file report on the incident but he refuses telling them that the incident happened outside of his jurisdiction.
Fed up with the lack of regard for their situation, the surfers climb out of the cop's truck and start walking toward the ATM machine so they can get cash for a taxi to the border. They spot another TJ police officer walking the street beat. It's 5:30am on Avenida Revolucion in Tijuana and all sorts of sketchy people are around. Whores. Street people. Thugs. Drunks. The cop is on patrol to keep some sense of order. She is genuinely kind and concerned for the three Americans, and she directs Duke to the ATM kiosk.
Duke walks into the ATM machine kiosk and immediately two guys follow him into the ATM machine. "I was very nervous about it," said Walt. "The woman cop ran over to Duke and basically guarded him from these two guys."
With cab fare in hand and their focus still on the getting to the USA the surfers, with the help of the cop, hail a taxi. The women cop tells the cab driver to bring the Americans to the border and to not stop for anyone. "That part was little odd," explained Walt. "It was like she knew something was going to happen."
Walt, Duke and Roger got in the taxi and headed towards the USA, maybe three miles away from the border. "The cab took us on a one way street toward the border. Not unusual, I don't think," explained Walt. "Then I hear a loud truck barreling down the street behind us. It's going
like 60, maybe 70 MPH."
The Nissan Frontier cuts directly in front of the taxi,slams on its brakes and skids to a stop in front of the Americans in the taxi, blocking it from going forward. "We all started screaming "Go! Go! Go!," explained Roger. "It was scene right of the movie'Traffic.'"
Then another vehicle, a VW Tourig, loaded up with four Mexicans, screeches up behind the taxi and boxes it in from behind. The cab couldn't move. All three surfers are screaming at the cab driver to move out.
Serendipitously, the driver positioned the cab in a manner so that she could escape from the two pursuing vehicles and the taxi bolted full speed to the border.
Carjacked and kidnapped and contracted for death, at this point the three American Surfers were completely spun. The would-be kidnappers pursued, but there were other cars around by this time as the commute across to the USA was filling up traffic.
They paid the taxi driver and bolted a hundred yards or so to the pedestrian crossing. They attempted to tell another Mexican police officer but again, no help. They crossed the border. They called 911. They called their wives. They were safe at last.
In hindsight Duke, Walt and Roger believe the masked carjacker was a police officer. According to the three, that may explain why he wore a mask and the other carjackers did not.
Another interesting note: According to the surfers, the carjackers all spoke fine English, with barely a trace of an Hispanic accent. The carjacking was very professional, and went down with a strategic polish one might see in the military. "These guys were pros, " explains Walt.
"Their guns were drawn and they were on us fast. Even if we had a gun, there is no way we could have acted."
Mexico has always been a scary place. According to one report, more journalists have died in Mexico than in Iraq.
It's the Wild West. It is not safe. "I'll never drive into Mexico again. I've been surfing in northern Baja for over 20 years and I'll never go back," explained Roger. "There is nobody that cares about you.
Nobody. You are all alone and the bad guys are the good guys and the good guys...well there aren't any."
