XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities, alt.politics.democrats.d, sac.general   
   XPost: alt.rush-limbaugh   
   From: bksherman@bleeding-rectums.cnn.com   
      
   This is what happens when immigrant scum from third world   
   nations are elected to public office.   
      
   SAN FERNANDO, Mexico — Miriam Rodríguez clutched a pistol in her   
   purse as she ran past the morning crowds on the bridge to Texas.   
   She stopped every few minutes to catch her breath and study the   
   photo of her next target: the florist.   
      
   She had been hunting him for a year, stalking him online,   
   interrogating the criminals he worked with, even befriending   
   unwitting relatives for tips on his whereabouts. Now she finally   
   had one — a widow called to tell her that he was peddling   
   flowers on the border.   
      
   Ever since 2014, she had been tracking the people responsible   
   for the kidnapping and murder of her 20-year-old daughter,   
   Karen. Half of them were already in prison, not because the   
   authorities had cracked the case, but because she had pursued   
   them on her own, with a meticulous abandon.   
      
   She cut her hair, dyed it and disguised herself as a pollster, a   
   health worker and an election official to get their names and   
   addresses. She invented excuses to meet their families,   
   unsuspecting grandmothers and cousins who gave her details,   
   however small. She wrote everything down and stuffed it into her   
   black computer bag, building her investigation and tracking them   
   down, one by one.   
      
   She knew their habits, friends, hometowns, childhoods. She knew   
   the florist had sold flowers on the street before joining the   
   Zeta cartel and getting involved in her daughter’s kidnapping.   
   Now he was on the run and back to what he knew, selling roses to   
   make ends meet.   
      
   Without showering, she threw a trench coat over her pajamas, a   
   baseball cap over her fire engine-red hair and a gun in her   
   purse, heading for the border to find the florist. On the   
   bridge, she scoured the vendors for flower carts, but that day   
   he was selling sunglasses instead. When she finally found him,   
   she got too excited, and too close. He recognized her and ran.   
      
   He sprinted along the narrow pedestrian pass, hoping to get   
   away. Mrs. Rodríguez, 56 at the time, grabbed him by the shirt   
   and wrestled him to the rails. She jammed her handgun into his   
   back.   
      
   “If you move, I’ll shoot you,” she told him, according to family   
   members involved in her scramble to capture the florist that   
   day. She held him there for nearly an hour, awaiting the police   
   to make the arrest.   
      
   In three years, Mrs. Rodríguez captured nearly every living   
   member of the crew that had abducted her daughter for ransom, a   
   rogues’ gallery of criminals who tried to start new lives — as a   
   born-again Christian, a taxi driver, a car salesman, a   
   babysitter.   
      
   In all, she was instrumental in taking down 10 people, a mad   
   campaign for justice that made her famous, but vulnerable. No   
   one challenged organized crime, never mind put its members in   
   prison.   
      
   She asked the government for armed guards, fearing the cartel   
   had finally had enough.   
      
   On Mother’s Day, 2017, weeks after she had chased down one of   
   her last targets, she was shot in front of her home and killed.   
   Her husband, inside watching television, found her face down on   
   the street, hand tucked inside her purse, next to her pistol.   
      
   For many in the northern city of San Fernando, her story   
   represents so much of what is wrong in Mexico — and so   
   remarkable about its people, their perseverance in the face of   
   government indifference. The country is so torn apart by   
   violence and impunity that a grieving mother had to solve the   
   disappearance of her daughter largely on her own, and died   
   violently because of it.   
      
   Her stunning campaign — recounted in case files, witness   
   testimony, confessions from the criminals she tracked down and   
   dozens of interviews with relatives, police officers, friends,   
   officials and local residents — changed San Fernando, for a   
   while at least. People took heart at her fight, and found   
   indignation in her death. The city placed a bronze plaque   
   honoring her in the central plaza. Her son, Luis, took over the   
   group she had started, a collective of the many local families   
   whose loved ones had disappeared. The authorities pledged to   
   capture her killers.   
      
   Scarred by a decade of violence, a brutal war between cartel   
   factions, the slaughter of 72 migrants and the killing of Mrs.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)