US soldier in Mexican jail for weapons charge

Future unclear for soldier jailed in Mexico

By Alicia A. Caldwell - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday May 10, 2008 16:12:00 EDT

EL PASO, Texas — When he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, Spc. Richard Torres was carrying a small arsenal in his car: an AR-15 assault rifle, a .45-caliber handgun, 171 rounds of ammunition, several cartridges and three knives.

At a checkpoint, Torres didn’t try to hide the weapons. But he insisted he hadn’t meant to cross the border with the guns, which in Mexico are restricted for use only by the military. While searching for parking in El Paso, he said, he inadvertently drove onto a bridge leading to Mexico and could not turn around.

Now the Iraq veteran is in a Mexican jail while a judge decides whether to believe his account: that an experienced soldier accidentally ended up in a border town where drug cartels pay top dollar for exactly the kind of high-powered weapons he happened to have.

“I want to go home. I just want to go,” Torres said last week at the jail in Ciudad Juarez.

Prosecutors have said only that the arrest reflected the government’s commitment to battling “every type of delinquency and organized crime.”

Torres, 25, said he had been driving all night to get from Fort Hood, in central Texas, to Fresno, Calif., where his mother lives. He planned to celebrate her birthday and put the weapons in storage while he deployed to Honduras to join the war on drugs. The guns were Torres’ personal property and not required for his military duties.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/05/ap_torres_051008/