MEXICO CITY — A teenage US citizen who acknowledged being a drug-cartel killer has finished his three-year juvenile-offender jail term in Mexico for homicide, kidnapping and drug and weapons possession — and he’s coming home.
The interior secretary of southern Morelos state, Jorge Messeguer, said the teen has been released and taken to an airport to be sent to the United States, where he has family. Messeguer said Edgar Jimenez Lugo would apparently go to a facility, “one of these centers for support, for aid” in San Antonio, Texas. His office did not immediately respond to requests for further information.
It does not appear that Jimenez Lugo faces any charges in the United States. The US Embassy said it would not publicly discuss the case due to privacy considerations.
In 2011, at the age of 14, Jimenez Lugo — who was known in Mexico as “El Ponchis,” which roughly translates as “husky” — confessed to killing four people whose beheaded bodies were found suspended from a bridge.
He was born in San Diego, California, but was raised by his grandmother in Mexico — where, he said, he was forcibly recruited by drug traffickers at age 11, authorities said.
When he was handed over to federal prosecutors, the boy calmly said in front of cameras that he participated in four killings while drugged and under threat, working for the South Pacific drug cartel.
He served his three-year sentence, the maximum allowable in the juvenile system.