Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 4, 1993 TAG: 9306040025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO LENGTH: Medium
"It's pretty mind-boggling," said Jack Hook of the Drug Enforcement Agency office in San Diego. "It's probably taken them six months to a year to do this, but the sophistication - it was built by a professional."
Mexican agents who found the 1,452-foot tunnel while investigating the slaying of a Roman Catholic cardinal indicated it was being built by reputed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, Hook said.
Guzman was the intended target of a rival cartel May 24 at the Guadalajara airport. Gunmen mistook Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo's car for Guzman's and shot the prelate 14 times at close range.
As they investigated Ocampo's killing, Mexican agents found documents a Tijuana safe house on Monday indicating the tunnel's location, Hook said.
The tunnel, about 5 feet high and 3 to 4 feet wide with a concrete floor, begins under a warehouse in Tijuana about 1,500 feet from a border crossing into California. It appeared to be headed toward a warehouse under construction on the U.S. side, but stopped about 50 feet short, Hook said.
Two-by-fours were laid as a track for carts, and generators at the Mexican warehouse powered the lights and air conditioning.
A completed tunnel apparently built by drug traffickers was discovered beneath Arizona's border with Mexico in 1990. It was only one-third the size of the new tunnel, U.S. authorities said, but equally sophisticated.
"How many more tunnels are out there that we don't know about?" Hook asked. "That's what really scary."
by CNB