Mexico suspends search for 7 missing US tourists

  By MARK STEVENSONMEXICO CITY -- The Mexican navy on Wednesday suspended its search for seven U.S. men missing since a charter fishing boat capsized and sank in Mexico's Sea of Cortez on July 3.

The announcement came a day after the U.S. Coast Guard ended aerial searches, in which a C-130 Hercules aircrew had covered an 803-square-mile (2,080 square-kilometer) area off the Baja California coast.

Mexican navy Lt. Sindy Espinoza said the naval search was "in a suspended phase," but could resume if new information on the sunken boat's whereabouts came to light. He said the navy would be alert for any reports from passing boats that might spot debris or other signs of the wreck.

"It's just a very sad day for all of us," Joelle Bautista, wife of missing Russell Bautista of Penngrove, California, said of the decision to suspend the search. "I just wish it was a bad dream."

Capt. Alonso Montalvo at the Baja California naval base in San Felipe said the navy "is maintaining its presence" in the area where the 105-foot (32-meter) fishing boat Erik went down about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of San Felipe.

The search has been complicated by uncertainty about the spot where the boat came to rest. Espinoza said Mexican divers had looked for the wreck but were unable to find anything.

The United States has offered to send deep-water divers to help with the search, but Mexico has so far used its own divers.

The navy and other fishing boats pulled 19 fishermen and all 16 crew members from the water late Sunday. The survivors had clung to coolers, rescue rings and life vests for more than 16 hours after a sudden storm capsized the boat.

Most of the 27 U.S. tourists on board the ship were Northern California men who traveled to Mexico for an annual Independence Day fishing trip.

Craig Wong of Walnut Creek, California, who survived the sinking, likened the end of the search to shutting off a life-support machine for his brother Brian, who is missing.

Brothers Gary and Glen Wong also survived the ordeal.

"My hope is that he is somewhere and the seven missing are somewhere on an island just surviving by the hour and by the day," Wong told San Francisco's KGO-TV.

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Mexico searches for 7 missing in boating accident

  By MARIANA MARTINEZTIJUANA, Mexico -- Mexican rescuers were scouring the Gulf of California for seven Americans whose fishing boat capsized two days ago, saying they were extending their search because the missing tourists could still be alive in the warm, calm waters.

One American has been confirmed dead in the accident, which came after a flash storm upended the boat before dawn Sunday, spilling dozens of tourists and crew members into the water. The identity of the dead man was not released.

By early Monday, 19 of the tourists and all 16 crew members had been picked up by the navy or other fishing boats after clinging to coolers, rescue rings and life vests for more than 16 hours.

Mexican Navy, army and state officials met late Monday to discuss the search and there were reports they would call off rescue efforts. But instead they announced the search would continue over an extended area.

Mexican navy Capt. Benjamin Pineda Gomez said that with the warm weather and water temperature in the Gulf of California, it's still possible that the missing tourists are alive.

"A person who casts away can survive many days. That sea is calm," he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard offered Mexico help in the search and rescue operation and said it will continue its operations.

The 115-foot (35-meter) vessel, the Erik, sank about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of the port of San Felipe around 2:30 a.m.

local time Sunday, the second day of a weeklong fishing trip the group had organized for several years each Independence Day holiday.

The boat capsized less than two miles (three kilometers) from shore, but the navy extended its search 60 miles (100 kilometers) deeper into the gulf later Monday after searching the area by helicopter and airplane and finding nothing, Pineda said.

Most of the 27 men on the fishing excursion are from Northern California and had made the trip before.

"I'm beyond concerned," said Kristina Bronstein, who is engaged to missing tourist Mark Dorland of Twain Harte, California.

She heard about the accident Monday morning from a trip organizer's wife, who told her Dorland, 62, was one of the first people to fall into the water. He wasn't wearing a life vest.

The couple are to be married next month.

Charles Gibson, a police officer with the Contra Costa Community College District, said people on the boat were awoken by other passengers and the crew as it began to sink.

Most "were in the water for over 16 hours," said Gibson, who had gone on the fishing trip twice before. "We hope that the information is getting to our families that we are here and that we survived."

Another survivor, Lee Ikegami, called his wife in San Martin, California, and told her he survived by clambering into a life raft when the boat overturned.

"There was an angel sitting on his shoulder," his wife, Murphy Ikegami, said.

Murphy Ikegami said the fishermen made the trip every year but previously would only make day trips out to sea to fish and stayed in coastal hotels at night. This year, she said, they decided they wanted to sleep on the boat.

Those rescued were in good condition with a few scrapes after bobbing in the intense sun and Gulf waters that were about 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degres Celsius), according to the Mexican navy. Photos released by the Mexican navy showed several sunburned fishermen in T-shirts and Bermuda shorts waiting to get on a bus.

The Erik has been on the Gulf of California, known in Mexico as the Sea of Cortez, since 1989, according to the website of the company Baja Sportfishing Inc. It was built in Holland and was equipped with stabilizers to handle the turbulent North Sea.

The California Secretary of State website says Baja Sportfishing's business license has been suspended. It doesn't state a reason or give a date.

"We have been working with Mexican Navy authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard in the search and rescue," Baja Sportfishing Inc.

said in statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "Right now our main concern is making sure that everyone is accounted for."

The company would not comment further. It said on its website Monday that all trips have been canceled.

---
Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez in Mexico City, Paul Elias in San Francisco, California, and Phuong Le in Seattle contributed to this report.

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9 bodies discovered in southern Mexico

  Eyewitness NewsMORELIA, Mexico -- Mexican authorities said Saturday the bodies of nine victims of suspected drug violence have turned up in the western state of Michoacan.

The state prosecutor's office said in a statement that authorities found eight bodies in three different areas of the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. Three of the cadavers had been dumped in front of the state public security agency.

Another body was found in the state capital of Morelia.

Several of the still unidentified bodies were discovered with messages from a group calling itself the Knights Templar and claiming responsibility for the killings.

The violence is apparently due to a rupture in the La Familia crime organization after the gang's leader, Nazario Moreno, was killed in a shootout with police Dec. 9.

One of the messages, staked to a man's body with an ice pick, read: "This will happen to everyone who supports Chango Mendez."

Jesus Mendez, also known as "El Chango," or "The Monkey," is a suspected leader of the La Familia cartel.

Messages from the Knights Templar first began appearing in March, with the group claiming that it would replace La Familia.

Messages left on bodies or hung in public areas are commonly used by drug gangs to threaten rivals, to deny responsibility for crimes or to send messages to authorities.

The name alludes to a Christian order of knights founded in 1118 in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade.

Also Saturday, a machine gun-fueled shootout inside a mall in the popular beach resort of Mazatlan left one man dead and a woman injured, according to the Sinaloa state prosecutors office. The aggressors escaped.

On Friday, unidentified criminals set fire to automobiles and buses to block a highway in Michoacan following a shootout with Mexican troops.

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Mexico returns 400 of 513 migrants found in trucks

  By MANUEL DE LA CRUZTUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico -- Mexican authorities returned about 400 migrants to their native Guatemala Wednesday, a day after they and 113 other migrants were found hidden inside two trailer trucks.

Officials of Mexico's National Immigration Institute said the 113 migrants still being held are from nations that don't share borders with Mexico or are Guatemalan minors or women who require special treatment.

The 400 Guatemalan migrants were returned to their country in air-conditioned buses Wednesday, a stark contrast to the sweltering, overcrowded trailers where they were found.

The remaining migrants include 47 from El Salvador, 32 from Ecuador, 12 from India, six from Nepal, three from China and one each from the Dominican Republic and Honduras, as well as Guatemalan minors and women.

Initial reports suggested that one of those aboard the trucks was Japanese, but officials later said that he was in fact Chinese.

"We have seen an increase in recent months" in the number of migrants caught while being smuggled through southern Mexico, despite the fact that "traffickers are charging increasingly high rates to move them north," noted Juan Jose Gonzalez, the head of the nonprofit group Southern Border Movement.

The immigrants found Tuesday said they had paid an average of $7,000 for the trip to the United States.

Mexican officials stressed during a visit to the southern border state of Chiapas Wednesday that new immigration facilities and inspection points are being built to fight migrant trafficking and provide humane conditions for migrants.

Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora said "we are here to find solutions and increase safety, legality and respect for the border population and migrants from Mexico, Central America and other countries," Blake Mora said.

The head of Mexico's Immigration Institute, Salvador Beltran Del Rio, said the government is building seven new immigrant holding and processing centers in southern Mexico.

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