After two young men were shot to death in San Juan Cosalá early this week, local residents face worrisome signs that rival drug gangs may be engaged in a violent turf war along the north shore corridor.
Responding to an emergency call placed shortly after midnight Monday, August 21 police proceeded to an address on Calle Narciso Mendoza where they found one man dead and another mortally wounded.
Eye witnesses reported that they were shot by two individuals dressed in black and armed with assault weapons who jumped out of a white pickup truck and opened fire. The victims were presumed to be small-time drug dealers in the town.
The double murder comes on the heels of the fatal shooting of a Jocotepec man, gunned down August 1 in broad daylight on a central street of the municipal seat. In addition, on August 6 two male corpses in an advanced state of decomposition were discovered in a creek bed on the isolated northern outskirts of Chapala. According to Chapala Police Chief Adán Domínguez, the dead men apparently met a violent end elsewhere, after which the bodies were dumped into the creek at a point near the north end of the Libramiento and eventually carried downstream by a heavy current of rainwater.
Meanwhile, as reported in this newspaper last week, state police have been rounding up suspected dope dealers in the Jocotepec area all month long. On August 9, five men and one woman were detained in three separate stings. Three more men were busted just two days later. All were caught in possession of packets containing small doses of diverse substances presumed to be marijuana, crystal meth and cocaine.
One of the individuals, captured with a loaded pistol hidden under his belt, was later identified as a prime suspect in homicide cases dating back to 2013 that involved five victims whose bodies were brutally mutilated.