Mexico Sinaloa ( Two Spanish Businessmen Murdered in Northwest Mexico -shot to death )

Two Spanish Businessmen Murdered in Northwest Mexico
Authorities said that the bullet-riddled bodies of the merchants were found inside a vehicle that was pushed into a canal in Culiacan, the capital of the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa

CULIACAN, Mexico – The bullet-riddled bodies of two Spanish businessmen were found inside a vehicle that was pushed into a canal in Culiacan, the capital of the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, officials said.

Jose Montoya Lozada, 58, and Fernando Carmona Romero, 57, worked as merchants and had their residences in Spain, the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office said.

Passersby spotted the vehicle in the Humaya canal around 8:40 a.m. Saturday and notified police, the AG’s office said.

The two men had their hands bound and had been placed on the back seat of the automobile.

The victims were reported missing on May 4, the AG’s office said.

The two men traveled frequently to the western city of Guadalajara, where they purchased clothing that they sold in several states, officials said.

The deputy attorney general in charge of the state’s central zone, Julio Cesar Romanillo, officers from several police departments and crime scene investigators went to the crime scene, the AG’s office said.

Sinaloa is home to the powerful drug cartel led by Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman.

The Sinaloa cartel, sometimes referred to by officials as the Pacific cartel, is the oldest drug cartel in Mexico and Guzman, considered extremely violent, is one of the most-wanted criminals in Mexico and the United States, where the Drug Enforcement Administration has offered a reward of $5 million for him.

The rival Los Zetas cartel has been trying to grab control of some areas in the state from the Sinaloa organization, which is also battling the Beltran Leyva organization.

The war on drugs launched by former President Felipe Calderon, who was in office from 2006 to 2012, left about 70,000 people dead, or an average of 32 per day, in Mexico, officials say.

Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, deployed thousands of soldiers and Federal Police officers across the country to fight drug cartels