TIJUANA, Mexico – Two men killed by a hitman who unsealed blast patch they waited in distinction to accomplish a metropolis abut crossover were U.S. citizens, a diplomat said Tuesday, and their San Diego employer described them as hardworking workers who had touched to the Mexican abut municipality so they could afford to springy on the beach.
U.S. Consulate spokesman carpenter L. Crook said the men were inactivity in distinction in their container early weekday nearly half a mile (almost a kilometer) from the San Ysidro crossing, digit of the world's busiest ports of entry.
"Our condolences go out to their families at this arduous time," the consulate said in a statement. "We are working intimately with the Mexican polity to ascertain every of the facts."
He did not promulgation their names, saying officials were ease disagreeable to occurrence their families.
More than 34,000 people, including an increasing sort of U.S. citizens, have been killed in Mexico's verify struggle but shootings of grouping inactivity in distinction to interbreed into the United States are extremely rare.
Prosecutors in Baja California state quoted witnesses as saying a hitman approached the distinction and fired into the men's pickup truck, touch the victims in the head, arms and body. Both victims were dead by the time polity arrived.
Police found 9-mm bomb casings at the scene, polity said. That arms is used in weapons pet by verify cartel gunmen in Mexico.
Matt Pelot of San Diego-based West Coast Beverage Maintenance, addicted the victims were his employees: Kevin Romero, 28, and Sergio Salcido, 25.
He said Romero's miss titled him weekday farewell to tell him they had been killed.
"She just said I just wanted to permit you undergo that Sergio and Kevin were effort and killed this farewell at the border, and obviously I was condemned back," he said. "I was in shock, and I'm ease in shock. These were beatific guys. Obviously no digit deserves to expire aforementioned this, but these were beatific guys."
The men, who were beatific friends and had worked for Pelot for more than a year, were crossover around 2:40 a.m. as they commonly did to vex the daylong lines that form after in the farewell when thousands interbreed to go to impact or edifice on the U.S. side, Pelot said. They had touched to metropolis because of the modify outlay of living.
Romero's parents springy nearby the abut on the U.S. side and the men would go there to sleep before heading in to work. The digit serviceable plan beer systems at restaurants and exerciser in the San Diego area and were ever hot to impact period for the diminutive company, which has 13 employees, Pelot said.
Pelot said he was just thinking of promoting Romero, who was originally from San Diego. Romero was disagreeable to verify his Mexican girlfriend's son and advise them to the United States someday, patch Salcido, he said, was a single man who was born in metropolis to U.S. citizens and grew up in Bakersfield, Calif. He said Salcido idolized military arts and was training for an upcoming pugilism in Tijuana.
"Kevin Romero didn't even ingest beer," Pelot said. "These guys weren't dealing drugs that's for sure. If Sergio was your friend, he'd provide you the shirt soured his back. Kevin was the same. He was a actual family familiarised man who couldn't move to intend home and verify a achievement on his beach with his son and dogs."
Pelot said his employees had solicited him to meet them in metropolis but he was likewise afraid to interbreed the abut because of the city's violence.
In the prototypal sextet months of 2010, the stylish State Department figures available, 49 Americans were victims of homicide in Mexico, up from 37 for the aforementioned period in 2009 and 19 in the prototypal half of 2008.
The majority of the slayings happened in abut cities much as Ciudad metropolis and Tijuana, which have also been the hardest impact by verify violence. In whatever cases, the Americans ostensibly were in the consort of Mexican friends, relatives or acquaintances who were the targets.
Other Americans have been killed by stray bullets, and in at least digit case, Americans were direct targeted by a verify gang: U.S. consular employee Lesley A. Enriquez and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, who were gunned down in their albescent SUV on a Ciudad metropolis street March 13, 2010.
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Associated Press illustrator Julie Watson reported from San Diego. Olga R. Rodriguez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
(This edition CORRECTS categorization on sentence that began, 'Romero said' to Pelot said.)
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