Author: cherrypeels

$2.5M bond for Border Patrol agent in killings of 4 in Texas

A
U.S. Border Patrol supervisor was jailed Sunday on $2.5 million bond in
Texas, accused of killing at least four women and injuring a fifth who
managed to escape.

Juan
David Ortiz, 35, was in custody in Laredo on four counts of murder
along with charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and
unlawful restraint, Webb County jail records showed.

Ortiz
was arrested a day earlier, after being found hiding in a truck in a
hotel parking lot in Laredo, at about 2 a.m. Saturday, capping what
investigators portrayed as a 10-day string of violence. Webb County
District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said Saturday that investigators
“consider this to be a serial killer” whose victims were believed to be
prostitutes.

Alaniz described how the Customs and Border Patrol supervisor continued going to work as usual throughout that time.

“As law enforcement was looking for the killer … he would be reporting to work every day like normal,” he said.

It
all began with the discovery Sept. 4 of the body of 29-year-old Melissa
Ramirez. According to a police affidavit , Ortiz said he killed Ramirez
a day earlier. Like the other victims, Ramirez was shot in the head and
left in a road in rural northwest Webb County.

She was a mother of two.

$2.5M bond for Border Patrol agent in killings of 4 in Texas

universal-equivalents:

“I certainly can’t imagine art for art’s sake … that’s a European approach, which never made any sense to me. I think what you have to do, which is the difficult thing about a writer, is avoid slogans. You have to have the [guts] to protest the slogan, no matter how noble it may sound. It always hides something else; the writer should try to expose what it hides.”

— James Baldwin, 1979 interview with the New York Times. See a collection of Baldwin quotes on writing here.