pleaded guilty in December<\/a>. They are awaiting sentencing.<\/p>\nProsecutors allege the cartel intentionally hired the teens because, as 15-year-olds, they could not be charged as adults in California. But federal prosecutors took the case and charged them as adults.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want cowardice. I give you the Sinaloa Cartel hiring teenagers to do their dirty work,\u201d U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement announcing the indictment.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s indictment against violent Sinaloa Cartel associates for directing teenagers to be their personal hitmen is one step closer to obtaining the final justice in this case,\u201d said TJ Holland, acting special agent in charge of the FBI\u2019s San Diego office.<\/p>\n
Details of the following account of the incidents come from federal court documents, including the new indictment and a request from prosecutors seeking to detain Quinones and Enriquez as potential flight and public safety risks.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors say the attempts to kill the victim\u00a0stem from the November 2023 theft of a \u201cmassive drug load\u201d from the Sinaloa Cartel in Tijuana. Murders of cartel members and Tijuana police followed.<\/p>\n
In retaliation for the heist, prosecutors allege, Sinaloa put out a hit on people they believed had been involved in it \u2014 including a man called \u201cVictim 1,\u201d whom the cartel tried to kill in his Tijuana home a month after the heist. He fled to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Cartel members worked with Antunez and Quinones to find him, prosecutors allege. The cartel also worked with the Mexican Mafia to hire teenage hitmen, eventually working with Enriquez, a then-18-year-old who managed the juvenile members of a Los Angeles gang. Texts between him, the teens and other gang associates are included in the filing, including one from Enriquez that says they are going to be \u201crich.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all getting new cars, new chains, new toys,\u201d reads a message from an account associated with Enriquez.<\/p>\n
\u201cU guys hitman now or what\u201d an associate said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically,\u201d came the reply.<\/p>\n
Federal documents also detail what prosecutors allege happened before and during the attempts to kill \u201cVictim 1,\u201d whom the Union-Tribune has previously reported was the alleged leader of a Tijuana drug cell and a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen, according to sources on both sides of the border with knowledge of the investigation.<\/p>\n
On March 26, the day before the attack, two of the defendants and the two teens delivered a Ram TRX truck to the victim, the new documents allege. They then spent the next day tracking the victim in San Ysidro and Chula Vista.<\/p>\n
Quinones and one of the teenage shooters exchanged about 64 calls and texts up until 8:51 p.m.<\/p>\n
The victim and his family were leaving a Chili\u2019s restaurant when, prosecutors alleged, the teens pulled up and \u2014 as Quinones watched from afar \u2014 Quintero got out and opened fire, striking the man\u2019s legs. The gun jammed after a single shot. The gunman got back in the passenger seat. Nunez tried to drive over the victim, but he was able to make it to safety.<\/p>\n
Antunez, Quinones and the teenagers quickly regrouped at the AirBnB, and a long call to a Mexican phone number followed. As a result, prosecutors allege, an adult member of the teenagers\u2019 gang would join in with more guns, and the cartel would increase the payment. The three expected to get a total of $150,000, one communication states.<\/p>\n
Early March 27, five hours after the restaurant attack, the two teenagers and the adult, 28-year-old Ricardo Sanchez, showed up at the victim\u2019s apartment to finish the job.<\/p>\n
Sanchez banged on the door. A friend of the victim opened up. The teenagers opened fire \u201cindiscriminately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The friend who had opened the door was shot and wounded but returned fire to protect himself and others, killing Sanchez. The teens fled and called Quinones for help. Nunez and Quintero were apprehended by police later that day.<\/p>\n
The only people at the apartment when the shooting started were the wife and child of the intended target and the friend who opened the door. Their target was at a hospital seeking treatment for his wounds from the attack hours earlier.<\/p>\n
The murder the two teens pleaded guilty to was the death of their accomplice Sanchez. Under California law, which makes up an element of the federal murder in aid of racketeering charge they admitted to, one person attempting to kill a second person can be charged with murder if a third person is killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three more people have been federally charged in connection with two chaotic attempted cartel hits by teenage gunmen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,138,2781,100],"class_list":{"0":"post-176693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","12":"tag-drugs","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}