The ObserverUS news This article is more than 15 years oldDrugs kidnap of child shocks US
This article is more than 15 years oldDesperate search for six-year-old as Mexican cartels bring bloody vendetta to Las VegasPolice in the United States are desperately searching for a six-year-old boy after he was taken from his home at gunpoint four days ago by three men posing as police. It is feared that the boy could be a pawn in the border drug war that has cost 3,700 lives this year alone and that he may have been abducted by a Mexican gang.
Cole Puffinburger was taken early last Wednesday after three armed men, described as Hispanic, went into the house in Las Vegas and demanded money. They then tied up Cole's mother and left with the boy.
Police believe he may have been taken because his grandfather, Clemens Fred Tinnemeyer, 51, owed Latino methamphetamine dealers between $8m and $20m (£4.6m-£11.6m). Last night Tinnemeyer was in custody being questioned by police; he is a legal bankrupt and was believed to be travelling in a beige-and-gold Winnebago motor trailer when he was arrested yesterday in Riverside over the Nevada-California border.
Las Vegas police captain Vincent Cannito said the case involved significant amounts of money and drugs and that there was a definite link between the family and drug deals. Law enforcement agencies said they were searching several locations in north east Las Vegas, and that, having arrested a second man, they were now looking for a third, Jesus Gasterone.
'The investigation has taken different aspects some of which involve family members, some friends of the family. There's a strong network within a very close proximity,' Cannito said. Investigators had issued an 'amber alert' for the missing boy to police departments on routes from Las Vegas to Mexico but withdrew it yesterday, saying its effectiveness had run its course.
According to early reports, Tinnemeyer has worked as a carpenter for more than two decades. He has not been in contact with his family since May and was reported missing last month.
The abduction happened when three men knocked on the door of the house where Cole Puffinburger lived. After tying up his mother and her boyfriend, they ransacked the house and then took Cole. Last night the boy's father appealed for his son's release. 'It is beyond me why anyone would do something so cruel to anyone, let alone a little boy,' said Robert Puffinburger, a civil engineer. 'All I want is for them to bring him home. I don't care about the rest of it. Just let him go somewhere. Drop him off. I don't care. Just keep him safe.'
The Mexican-run drug trade uses transport corridors though New Mexico and Arizona to Las Vegas, and then on to markets in the Midwest and beyond. Investigators said traffickers usually seized cars and other assets to recoup money. But they also fear Cole's abduction is a sign that the grotesque violence that characterises the battle for control of Mexico's drug trade could be seeping across the border into the US.
An attempted crackdown by authorities since August appears to have triggered a dramatic escalation in violence, with 387 people killed in the first two weeks of October and gangs resorting to torture and beheadings. Even women and children are targets in the daily ritual of revenge killings.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the border turf war is primarily between the Tijuana-based cartel of the Arellano Félix brothers, the Juárez cartel, based across Chihuahua state and led by the Carrillo Fuentes family, and the Sinaloa gang, led by Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán.
'The pressure [from the authorities] that's being put upon drug cartels in Mexico has caused an escalation in violence,' said DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen last week. 'It's horrific. If you look at what's happened with many of the beheadings down there, the killings are definitely to send a message.'
On Friday, President George W Bush's top drug enforcement officer, John Walters, warned that Mexico's cartels were now entering the US to make their attacks. 'They come across and kidnap, murder and carry out assassinations,' he said. 'They do not respect the border.'
Walters sent a direct message to the traffickers: 'They have a choice: come in and face justice, or die.'
In one incident last week six people were lined up against a wall and shot in Ciudad Juárez, directly across the border from El Paso, Texas. The assassins fired more than 100 bullets and left a note warning: 'Message for all rats, this will continue.'
One of the victims blamed a drug cartel for the killings before he died, saying he had been accused by his murderers of selling drugs for a rival gang.
The abduction has left the Las Vegas neighbourhood of Cherry Grove Avenue fearful. The victim's next-door neighbour, Guadaloupe Negrete, said parents in the area were anxious.
Cole Puffinburger has now become an unwitting trophy in an escalating war.
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