3 Tijuana Policemen Arrested in Murder Case

Investigators in Mexico said Thursday that they have arrested seven people, including three Tijuana police officers, in connection with the kidnapping and killing of two Santa Ana men.

The victims’ bodies were discovered Wednesday buried under the concrete floor of a Tijuana auto body shop. Both men had been shot in the head, said Fausto Gonzalez, an investigator with the San Diego Police Department.

The victims were identified as Juan Jose Solorzano and Jose Ramon Santillan. Mexican police officials described the men as owners of a Santa Ana-based contracting and real estate company who were in Tijuana on vacation.

But San Diego police said the men raised roosters and were abducted after a cock-fighting match.

The men had telephoned their families in Santa Ana on July 15, saying they had been kidnapped that day and needed $1 million for ransom, Gonzalez said. The families could raise only about $150,000, which they placed in a bag and drove to Tijuana three days after the kidnapping, Gonzalez said.

The families left the money inside the car--with the engine running--at a parking lot specified by the kidnappers.

“There was then a phone call made between the suspects and the family members,” Gonzalez said. “The families asked why the suspects hadn’t released the victims after they got the money. . . . The suspects were angry [because] they didn’t get the full ransom.”

After that phone call, the families contacted Mexican police. They told investigators they had not reported the kidnapping earlier for fear that the men would be killed, said Juan Manuel Valero, investigator for the Baja California police department’s kidnapping unit.

“The family was fearful of retaliation if they contacted us sooner,” he said.

Valero said Solorzano and Santillan had been leaving a popular Tijuana restaurant when a car pulled up. Three men emerged from the car and ordered the victims inside, he said.

Mexican investigators said the victims knew their kidnappers, possibly through a business deal. They were apparently taken to an abandoned house in Tijuana and forced to call their families with the ransom demand.

San Diego police, however, said the suspects probably knew the victims from the cock-fighting circuit.

“Cock fighting can be a very lucrative business,” Gonzalez said. “The reason [the kidnappers] demanded such a high amount of money might have been because they knew the victims were involved in cock fighting or some other kind of activity.”

Police searched for the men for 13 days, before receiving a tip that their bodies were buried under the auto shop.

Mexican state police said the three men arrested in Tijuana on suspicion of kidnapping and murder are Arnulfo Arambula Fuentes, 49, his son Arnulfo Arambula Mitchel, 22, and Ruben Israel Velazco, 37.

Four other other men--including three Tijuana city police officers--were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, but investigators said they did not know what the officers’ roles were. Among the four was another son of Fuentes’, Rafael.

Valero described Arnulfo Arambula Fuentes as the ring leader who apparently enticed the Tijuana police officers into the deal, promising part of the profits.

Police arrested him by tracing the license-plate number of the car used in the kidnapping and seen at the restaurant. He reportedly led them to the other suspects, according to Zeta, the Tijuana newspaper.

Gonzalez said Fuentes has a criminal record in the United States. He has been convicted of transporting marijuana, carrying a loaded firearm and possessing false documents.