TIJUANA, Mexico — A son of a local political leader has been kidnapped in this violence-plagued border city, and two other kidnap victims — one the son of a well-known singer — have been found slain.
In the first case, four armed men intercepted a car carrying 14-year-old Victor Lagunas Penalosa on Wednesday and seized the boy in the Playas de Tijuana residential area, the state attorney general's office said.
The boy is the son of Victor Lagunas Ruiz, president of the city branch of the National Action Party, which won Mexico's July 2 presidential election and which has governed Baja California state since 1989. Lagunas Ruiz also owns a chain of furniture stores.
There was no immediate indication that politics was involved.
Also Wednesday, police said they discovered the body of Leonardo Martinez Aguilera, the 21-year-old son of well-known ranchero music singer Beatriz Adriana. A friend of the victim, 20-year-old Aquiles Velgis Hernandez, also was killed.
A sobbing Adriana appeared on the Televisa television network late Wednesday and urged the death penalty for the killers — a sanction Mexico does not have.
Adriana said her son was visiting his friend while on vacation when kidnappers seized them and demanded several hundred thousand dollars.
By the time she arrived in the city, she learned that they had been found dead.
"They threw him out like trash. That's not fair," Adriana said, struggling to control her voice while tears fell from behind her dark glasses.
Tijuana, a fast-growing city of 1.2 million people, has been plagued in recent years by murders linked to drug gangs who take advantage of the city's location on the U.S. border.
It also has seen numerous kidnappings, though reported incidents had seemed to taper off in recent months.