Monterrey (Mexico), Aug 20 (EFE) The police chief of the Monterrey suburb of Apodaca in Mexico has said that his daughter, who was arrested in a shoot-out between soldiers and gunmen, worked for a drug cartel.
“This is a real mess … everything I did for them (his children) and now this news. I don’t know where to hide,” chief Amador Medina Trevino said in a press conference Wednesday.
The chief’s daughter, Andrea Guadalupe Medina Lopez, was arrested Monday during a shootout in a residential neighbourhood in San Nicolas de los Garza, another city in the Monterrey metropolitan area.
Three gunmen and the Gulf cartel’s local leader, identified as Refugio Garza Pescador, were killed in the incident, which prompted officials to warn residents to stay in their homes.
The shootout started when soldiers spotted several gunmen in an armoured SUV and began following them.
The gunmen took cover inside two houses that were surrounded by soldiers supported by federal and state police.
A blast from a grenade was heard and smoke began rising from one of the houses about 75 minutes after the standoff started.
The gunmen then scrambled over the roofs of the houses and tried to escape, but they were tracked down by the security forces and the shooting resumed in the streets.
The young woman is pregnant and news reports said Garza Pescador was the child’s father.
“I saw quite a lot of her until she was 16. Her mother died and I sought her out to give her my support, so she could study. But she left school, she got married and later I didn’t see her again,” Medina Trevino said.
“You never expect this kind of thing from your children, and I believe that this child lacked support, someone to guide her and here are the consequences,” the police chief said.
Medina Trevino is also the father of former Monterrey police chief Amador Medina Flores, who is currently under investigation by federal authorities for his suspected links to drug traffickers.
Another of his children, Alberto Medina Flores, was the police chief of Santa Catarina, another city in the area, but he resigned in August 2007, apparently amid threats from criminals.
