A Merciless Solution

"A soldier stood the kid up and killed him."
Witness, Arcelia, Mexico

"We have encouraged the government of Mexico to investigate and we understand that several Mexican entities are investigating this incident. But as in all cases where security forces use lethal force, we think it's imperative that there is a credible review of the circumstances undertaken in response to them and the appropriate civilian authorities should conduct those investigations."
Jeff Rathke, spokesman, U.S. State Department

In this Sept. 15, 2014 photo, a photograph of Erika Gomez Gonzalez, left, hangs on the wall of her mother's home in Arcelia, Mexico. Gomez's mother, who did not want to give her name for fear of reprisals, says she witnessed her daughter's death when army soldiers fired first at an armed group at a warehouse on June 30 in the town of San Pedro Limon, Mexico. She said one man died in the initial shootout, when the rest of the gunmen surrendered on the promise they would not be hurt. She recalled that her daughter, who was face down in the ground with a bullet in her leg, was rolled over while she was still alive and shot more than half a dozen times in the chest. The mother said she arrived to the warehouse the day before the shooting, in an attempt to take her daughter home, but gang members wouldn't let her. (AP Photo/Eduardo Castillo)

"Anything that needs to be made known, if something happened that differs from the version we have, will of course be made public."
Osorio Chong, top security official

"It is our responsibility to clarify with precision whether the acts (of the soldiers) were carried out according to the law and with absolute respect to human rights."
Mexican Attorney General's Office

"If the testimony is true, we are facing one of the most serious massacres in Mexico. It's extremely important that we keep pressure on the officials so that hopefully soon they produce the records that should be scrutinized by the public in Mexico."
Jose Miguel Vivanco, director, Human Rights Watch for the Americas

Fifteen-year-old Erika Gomez Gonzalez whose mother describes her as having been involved with the 'wrong crowd', accuses Mexican soldiers of shooting and killing her daughter after a confrontation with what appears to have been a youthful drug gang with which her daughter was involved. Mexico, without an iota of a doubt has a dreadful problem with drug traffickers and cartels.
The carnage involved in criminal gangs wreaking havoc on society is well enough known.

The number of fatalities in Mexico related to the illegal drug trade is abhorrent, and in many instances the police themselves are known to be involved, taking their cut of the immensely illegal, lucrative trade. It is even recognized that the Islamist terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas are involved in the drug cartels to benefit themselves financially.

It is obvious that a strong government response had to result from the deadly situation. And it would seem that policing agents in Mexico have in some instances patterned themselves after the deadly no-holds-barred techniques of the drug runners they are sworn to bring under control by the nature of their public office in upholding the law. By so doing, they replicate the brutalities of the gangsters.

Erika Gonzalez's mother described her daughter lying face down on the ground, with a bullet wound in her chest. Another suspected gang member also injured in the initial attack when the army fired at the armed group at a warehouse near San Pedro Limon lay nearby. The group had surrendered and were disarmed.The witness stated that the army had fired at the armed group of youth at the warehouse when one gunman died and another along with her daughter were wounded.

The gunmen surrendered, with the promise they would not come to harm. As Erika Gonzalez lay on the ground face down, soldiers rolled her on her back and shot her over a half-dozen times in the chest. The other gang member was killed as well. The rest of the gang members were interrogated, taken inside the warehouse one after the other. From where she stood the girl's mother, in army custody, heard gunshots and the dying moans of the rest.

FILE - In this July 3, 2014 file photo, bullet holes and blood stain a wall above where bodies were found in an unfinished warehouse that was the site of a shootout between Mexican soldiers and alleged criminals on the outskirts of the village of San Pedro Limon in Mexico state, Mexico. The Mexican government has maintained that 22 people killed on the early morning of June 30 died in a fierce shootout with security forces, a version that came into question because government troops suffered only one wounded, and physical evidence at the scene pointed toward more selective killings. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)The Associated Press

Associated Press reporters went to the warehouse several days afterward to look around and take photographs. There was no sign of sustained fighting. But there were five areas along the inside walls of the warehouse showered with the same pattern: several closely placed bullet marks, covered with a mass of spattered blood. Evidence that some of those who were killed having stood against the wall, were shot at chest level.

According to the state of Mexico prosecutors' office in response to the AP report, there was "no evidence at all of possible executions". Ballistic evidence was found of "crossfire with a proportionate interchange of gunshots", according to the prosecutor's office. This version was contradicted by relatives of three other gang members and a doctor who considered the wounds he saw on Erika's body consistent with the mother's account.

All gang members were in their teens or early 20s. Now they are all, twenty-two of them, dead.