Drug courier paid for theft with life

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A Mexican drug cartel delivered a deadly message last year when it dumped drug courier Danny Baca burned and shot full of holes on Albuquerque's West Mesa.

"Autopsy showed he had been shot at least 22 times prior to being set on fire," Bernalillo County sheriff's Sgt. Mark Kmatz said Friday. "They've begun basically proving a point with anybody they can on missing drug loads."

Cartel leaders made an example of Baca, 53, for skipping out with a drug load entrusted to him, Kmatz added. His body was found on a remote mesa road in January 2008.

Investigators said they believe Gerardo Nuñez, who has ties to a drug cartel, hired Baca and Joseph Laycock to transport about $7,000 of cartel dope from Mexico and into Texas.

However once on the U. S. side Baca and Laycock kept the drugs and brought them to Albuquerque.

A confidential informant told detectives Nuñez, 27, Jaime Veleta, 24, and Mario Talavera, 24, along with an unnamed member of the drug cartel hunted Baca down with assault weapons.

Deputies arrested Nuñez on Tuesday and said at a Friday news conference that they need help tracking down Talavera and Veleta.

Talavera disappeared Thursday night from an Albuquerque halfway house

"The pattern he'd had for four months--going to work, going to school, going back to the halfway house--he must have gotten tipped off that he was going to be next," Kmatz said.

Veleta and Talavera are wanted on an arrest warrant carrying a $1 million cash-only bond. Deputies do not know yet who pulled the trigger so for now all three men face kidnapping and burglary charges.

"The cartel drug violence that has been making international news along all the border crossings both north and south of the border with Mexico is working its way up all the way into New Mexico and the Albuquerque area," Kmatz said.

Laycock, Baca's partner in transporting the drugs, has not been seen.