A 30-year-old surfer from Arizona was shot dead Friday evening as he drove from the border city of Nogales to the seaside town of Puerto Penasco in the western state of Sonora.
Nicholas Quets was driving with his girlfriend and her mother on the Altar-Caborca highway (Federal Highway 2) in a late model Ford pickup truck when gunmen in another vehicle tried to force him to pull over.
When Quets refused to stop, the assailants opened fire.
Quets died at the scene. His girlfriend and her mother were unharmed.
The gunmen certainly keyed on Quets’ pickup truck, as the vehicles are favored by cartel operatives. The Americans may have been mistaken for members of a rival cartel.
The truck’s Arizona license plate also undoubtedly drew the assailants’ attention.
The portions of Federal Highway 2 connecting the border cities of Sonoyta and Nogales with the western city of Caborca are considered some of the most dangerous in Mexico.
Two elderly Mexican-American women were found dead on 23 August in an overturned, bullet-ridden Nissan Pathfinder in Sonora.
The two had intended to travel from the Lukeville, Arizona/Sonoyta, Sonora, border crossing to Caborca, 100 miles south, their birthplace.
The attack vehicle, an F150, was found abandoned nearby with weapons, ammunition and bulletproof vests, suggesting cartel involvement.
Possibly, the women failed to stop at a cartel checkpoint or drove into a firefight.
An intense turf war has caused a steep increase in criminal violence throughout the Sonora, with Sinaloa Cartel factions fighting each other, as well as the Caborca Cartel, Juarez Cartel and other gangs for control of narcotics- and refugee-smuggling routes to the United States.
While the fighting has been most intense around Caborca, Hermosillo, 170 miles south of the city, also has been severely affected, as has Guaymas, Sonora’s main port a major entry point for fentanyl and precursor drugs for methamphetamines, and Ciudad Obregon, 70 miles southeast of Guaymas.
The violence has spread west to the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado, which lies across from San Luis, Arizona, and east to the border cities of Nogales, Naco and Agua Prieta.
On 2 January, three Mexican employees of a local electric company drove into in a firefight between cartel gunmen on the road south from Caborca to Desemboque, 150 miles to the southwest, and were injured by flying glass.
In addition to cartel crime, kidnapping and conventional crime are rampant in cities across Sonora.
The State Department repeatedly has urged travelers to reconsider travel to all of Sonora.
It advised that travel between the cities of Hermosillo and Nogales be undertaken only during daylight hours and only on Federal Highway 15 and urged Americans to travel to Puerto Penasco in northwestern Sonora only during daylight and only via Federal Highway 8. US citizens visiting Puerto Penasco were urged to use the Lukeville/ Sonoyta border crossing.
Travel in Agua Prieta and San Luis Rio Colorado should be confined to city limits and undertaken only during daylight hours.
US government employees are prohibited from traveling in the Triangular region west of the Mariposa US Port of Entry, east of Sonoyta and north of Altar. They also are prohibited from navigating areas east of Federal Highway 17, the road between Moctezuma and Sahuaripa and State Highway 20 between Sahuaripa and Federal Highway 16.
This service strongly discourages road travel throughout Sonora, especially after dark when most gun battles take place. It strongly advises against travel to Caborca, except on the most urgent business.
