Police note gang mentality in human smugglers

By Gary Grado, Tribune

February 4, 2007

Five illegal immigrants, one of them bleeding from a gunshot wound to the leg, hid overnight in an Eloy olive grove. About 100 yards away, the body of David Norris Jr. was slumped over in a pickup truck. A band of armed men in camouflage attire and berets had ambushed his vehicle about 12 hours earlier and shot him dead.

The 12 illegal immigrants in the truck scattered, and seven fled the scene.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is still trying to figure out whether the Jan. 28 ambush by men described as three whites and one Hispanic was the work of an extremist militia group or a human smuggling conflict, said detective Buddy Johnson.

One certainty is the attack involved illegal immigrants, whose presence along the “smugglers corridor” to the Valley attracts murders, extortion, kidnapping, car chases, gunfights and other mayhem that is part of the human smuggling trade.