EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexico has detained another suspect in the 2019 murder of nine Americans in the northern state of Sonora.
Federal agents and members of Mexico’s National Guard on Wednesday detained Uriel Valle Dominguez, a.k.a. “El 18,” in a house in Chihuahua City, the Attorney General’s Office said in a news release.
Valle is charged with organized criminal activity and was immediately flown to the Altiplano 1 maximum-security prison in Toluca, Mexico, the AG’s Office said.
The suspect is now among 20 alleged members of La Linea drug cartel facing charges for the Nov. 4, 2019, ambush of a caravan of vehicles that killed three adult female members of the LeBaron and Langford families as well as six of their children.
Mexican investigators said La Linea gunmen were involved in a territorial dispute with a Sinaloa cartel cell known as “Los Salazar” and thought the Americans’ vehicles were carrying their rivals, so they riddled them with bullets.
Fidel Alejandro Villegas – the former chief of police of Janos, Chihuahua – and Roberto Gonzalez Montes, a.k.a. “32” or “The Mute,” who was La Linea’s boss in Western Chihuahua, are the highest-ranking cartel members jailed and charged with the killings.
“They detained ’18,’ allegedly involved in the massacre of my daughter, grandchildren and other family members,” tweeted Adrian LeBaron, father of Rhonita Miller, one of the victims. “I demand to be present at his arraignment. I need it!”
The other two adults killed in the attack were Dawna Langford, 43, and Christina Marie Langford Johnson, 29. Eight-month-old twins Tiana and Titus Miller were among the six child fatalities. Five other children survived the shooting.
