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Prison riot touches off street violence
TIJUANA – The riot that broke out Wednesday afternoon at the state prison touched off other violence along a major city street several hours later.
A mob of about 100 people set several fires along the city's most important boulevard, momentarily paralyzing traffic at the height of the Wednesday evening commute. They were protesting conditions at the nearby La Mesa State Penitentiary.
The group grabbed trash bags, pieces of wood and other items and set fires in the middle of Boulevard Diaz Ordaz just as workers were heading for home. Some carried a banner that read, “We want justice. Governor, we want to be heard.”
About 30 minutes after the first fire was set, police arrested about 25 of the protesters and started to reopen traffic lanes.
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TIJUANA – Authorities regained control of the state penitentiary and surrounding blocks Wednesday afternoon, three hours after rioting broke out again at the facility for the second time in three days.
Baja California's public safety director, Daniel de la Rosa Anaya, said that several people had been injured in the latest violence, but that there had been no deaths.
Speaking outside the prison, he said that guards had fired rubber bullets and pepper spray to quell the uprising.
Minutes earlier, an official with the Red Cross, Jesus Esquer, had said that at least 11 people, five police officers and six inmates, had been wounded, two by gunfire.
Ambulances began arriving around 3 p.m. at the east wing of the La Mesa State Penitentiary to remove the injured.
From atop a building across the street from the prison, row after row of inmates, hands clasped behind their heads, could be seen sitting in the central courtyard, surrounded by guards. Mounds of smashed desks, ripped mattresses and clothes could be seen smoldering beside them. Earlier, black smoke was seen coming from the prison.
Meanwhile, huge crowds of people, estimated at possibly several thousand, some of who had been rioting earlier, continued to mill outside the prison waiting to find out what had happened inside.
Wednesday's violence began just before 1 p.m. when female inmates began to riot. More than a dozen women climbed on top of the prison's building No. 7, where they are housed, and began to break lights and scream to a throng of people on the sidewalk outside. They shouted that they were being beaten and that there were dead and injured inmates inside.
Rioting then spread to other buildings. About a half-hour later, numerous shots could be heard inside the prison as clouds of choking, black smoke rose above the facility. Federal agents began arriving to try and quell the disturbance.
Outside, an estimated 2,000 people began to rampage against authorities, throwing rocks and other objects and at one point cornering a municipal police officer until he was able to escape. Many of them were relatives of inmates who had been pleading since Sunday for news of loved ones inside the prison.
Nearly 200 state and municipal police officers then converged on the scene, some from as far away as Tecate. Some fired their weapons into the air to drive back the crowds and then set up barriers.
Around 2 p.m., waves of pepper spray wafted through the air. It was unclear whether it was unleashed by inmates inside or by guards trying to regain control. People outside the prison buildings fell to the ground, gasping for air, including several federal police officers.
In the Sunday riot, authorities said that at least four inmates died, although one high-ranking state official said Wednesday that more bodies had been found.
The prison is the most overcrowded of the state's detention facilities, with more than 8,000 inmates.
Omar Millan Gonzalez is a contributor to The Union-Tribune's Spanish-language newspaper, Enlace.
