North Carolina, United States
The authorities of the Alamance county, in North Carolina (USA), are investigating a shooting that took place in a house allegedly linked to a Mexican drug cartel, in which there was apparently an attempted robbery that left two people dead, one of them a teacher at a nearby school.
According to a statement from the Alamance Bailiff’s Office, in connection with the shooting on April 8, in which Professor Barney Dale Harris and Alfonso Beltrán Lara were killed, authorities are looking to Juan Daniel Salines Lara, on whom weighs an arrest warrant for cocaine trafficking.
The shooting took place in a house linked to a Mexican drug cartel, which according to local media was identified by authorities as Jalisco New Generation.
Police confiscated two pounds (more than a pound) of cocaine and $ 7,000 in cash.
Sheriff’s Office detectives have determined that the two dead were each part of a different criminal gang.
The investigation is open and there is a detainee, Steven Alexander Stewart, Harris’s brother-in-law, with whom he allegedly went into the house in search of drugs and money, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
When police arrived on the scene on April 8, they found signs of a shooting and two people with gunshot wounds.
Harris, a Spanish teacher and basketball coach at Monroe’s Union Academy Charter School, was pronounced dead at the scene and Alonso Beltrán Lara later died at the hospital to which he was transferred.
County Sheriff Terry Johnson said at a news conference that Harris had a double life, as he was allegedly stuck in the “dangerous and lethal world of drugs.”
Police hypothesis
The hypothesis of the police is that he and his brother-in-law entered the house at a time when there was no one inside and when they were there Alonso Beltrán Lara arrived, from whom they tried to obtain information about the place where he kept drugs and money.
Since he didn’t tell them anything, they “executed” him with a shot to the neck, according to the bailiff’s account.
Then other occupants of the house arrived and one was set up shooting between them and the intruders, in which Harris received a shot that cut his life despite wearing a bulletproof vest.
“The vest didn’t work with the class of ammunition used,” the bailiff said.
Investigators believe Harris and Stewart had used tracking devices to find out the whereabouts of the house’s occupants before assaulting it.
Stewart, who was denied bail, appeared this week before the judge and is jailed and charged with armed assault and murder.
Authorities have asked citizens to report if they have any data on this case.
According to the statement, it is possible that the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office may incur additional charges to include other individuals who may be involved.
Precisely in mid-March it became known to the Justice Department that a large-scale DEA operation called “Python” resulted in the arrest of more than 600 members of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG), six of them in North Carolina. EFE