Fast and Furious: The Ball Still Rolls

Even though Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to release the documents which will likely prove that he lied about the Fast and Furious scandal, we do learn a little more about this iconic ATF activity directed by the Obama Administration every day.

The latest revelation is that one of those guns the ATF allowed to be sold to the Mexican Drug Cartels was used to kill a Mexican Police Chef. 

The LA Times read  that some internal Department of Justice records showing that a high powered rifle allowed to "walk" was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco earlier this year. The bulk of the Fast and Furious weapon sales were orchestrated on the cartel side by Nicolas Balcazar Lopez aka El Bronco, a police commandant turned narco. Oddly enough, he lived in Jalisco until the Mexican Government arrested him last year. He's been awaiting trial in Mexico City, but nobody expects that the matter will be tried anytime soon.

Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death January 29, 2013 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire. His wife  was with him in the car at the time. She was injured. One bodyguard was killed in the car and a second one was injured. 

Local authorities said eight suspects in their 20s and 30s were arrested after police seized them nearby with a cache of weapons — rifles, grenades, handguns, helmets, bulletproof vests, uniforms and special communications equipment. The area is a hot zone for rival drug gangs, with members of three cartels fighting over turf in the region. 

A semi-automatic WASR rifle, the firearm that killed the chief, was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz. The notation on the Department of Justice trace records said the WASR was used in a “HOMICIDE – WILLFUL – KILL –PUB OFF –GUN” –ATF code for “Homicide, Willful Killing of a Public Official, Gun.” 

The WASR used in Jalisco was purchased on Feb. 22, 2010, about three months into the Fast and Furious operation, by 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo of Phoenix. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, making false statements and smuggling goods from the United States and was sentenced to 41 months in prison. 

Court records show Montelongo personally obtained at least 109 firearms during Fast and Furious. How the WASR ended up in the state of Jalisco, which is deep in central Mexico and includes the country’s second-largest metropolis, Guadalajara, remained unclear. 

After the shooting in Jalisco, local officials said some of the suspects confessed to two other shootouts in the area, including one that left seven people dead, all part of the continuing feud by rival cartel members.