Mexican authorities uncover cartel safe house in Tijuana

By Greg Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE BREAKING NEWS TEAM
Photo by GREG GROSS / Union-Tribune
6:37 p.m. January 21, 2008

TIJUANA – Days after a wild, deadly shootout between drug cartel gunmen and Mexican police and soldiers, authorities have uncovered what they say is a clandestine training ground for cartel assassins, complete with an underground target range that investigators believe went undetected for months.

The house was raided late Saturday night by heavily armed federal police. They found two armored pickups parked at the home, along with two other vehicles that had hidden compartments, authorities said.

At ground level, the two-story green-and-white hillside house in the Independencia section of Tijuana included a machine shop for assembling and repairing weapons. Parts of disassembled pistols and rifles lay on the floors.

Below ground was a target range measuring about 50 feet long by 21 feet wide and 8 feet high, its walls and ceiling lined with gray soundproofing material and equipped with a fan to ventilate the gunsmoke. Thousands of spent cartridges – perhaps as many as 30,000, according to authorities – were collected in bins along one wall.