Four government investigators, two from the United States and two from Mexico, were killed early Sunday in a car accident in the northern state of Chihuahua while viewing newly discovered drug labs, a spokesman for the State Attorney General’s Office said.
The Mexican victims included the director of the state’s investigative agency and an officer, state officials said. They were returning from an operation to seize and destroy two clandestine methamphetamine laboratories deep in the state’s mountainous terrain. No details were immediately released about the American officials.
“This tragedy is a solemn reminder of the risks faced by those Mexican and U.S. officials who are dedicated to protecting our communities,” the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, said in a statement.
The accident occurred around 2 a.m. as a convoy of six vehicles from the State Investigation Agency and the State Attorney General’s Office was traveling back to the state capital, the prosecutor’s office said.
The convoy was navigating the rugged highlands of the Sierra Madre Occidental, where the roads are narrow, often unpaved and carved into steep mountainsides, with sharp turns and sheer drops, when the lead vehicle skidded off the side, the office said.
The vehicle plunged about 200 meters down a cliff and caught fire, officials said at a news release. All four occupants died at the scene. Three were ejected from the vehicle, and one was found inside.
Earlier in the day, the group had been investigating the labs, which were used to manufacture synthetic drugs, and had been discovered one day earlier.
Those killed included Pedro Román Oceguera Cervantes, the director of the State Investigation Agency and Manuel Genaro Méndez Montes, an agency officer who was driving the vehicle. The two other victims were training officers assigned to the United States Embassy in Mexico, the authorities said.
The American officials had been accompanying the operation as part of joint efforts to curb the flow of illicit drugs into the United States and to provide training to local investigators handling highly dangerous substances like methamphetamine and fentanyl, said Eloy García, spokesman for the State Attorney General’s Office.
Mr. García said the crash appeared to have been an accident, citing the treacherous driving conditions and the long distance from the remote laboratories. The journey can take up to 17 hours by road to the capital, he said.
“There is no evidence that the accident could have been provoked; there were no armed attacks or confrontations,” he said. “It was an accident, without a doubt.”
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has launched a sweeping crackdown on cartel groups, a campaign shaped in part by mounting pressure from President Trump to curb the flow of deadly drugs into the United States, particularly fentanyl.
Across the rugged stretch of the Sierra Madre Occidental were the accident occurred, the criminal landscape has long been shaped by often violent territorial disputes between major cartels—mainly the Sinaloa Cartel and Juárez Cartel—and its local cells such as La Línea. The area forms part of a strategic corridor leading north to the United States, and is a conduit for synthetic drugs.
The drug labs appeared to have been linked to the Sinaloa cartel, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and main supplier of illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drug to the United States, Mr. García said.
Photographs released by the attorney general’s office on Saturday show improvised sprawling drug labs, with piping that snakes between clusters of cylindrical barrels, and tarps loosely stretched between trees to cover supplies and equipment.
Paulina Villegas is a reporter for The Times based in Mexico City, where she covers criminal organizations, the drug trade and other issues affecting the region.
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