DRUGS KIDNAP OF CHILD SHOCKS US

Desperate Search For Six-Year-Old As Mexican Cartels Bring Bloody
Vendetta To Las Vegas

Police in the United States are desperately searching for a
six-year-old boy after he was taken from his home at gunpoint four
days ago by three men posing as police. It is feared that the boy
could be a pawn in the border drug war that has cost 3,700 lives this
year alone and that he may have been abducted by a Mexican gang.

Cole Puffinburger was taken early last Wednesday after three armed
men, described as Hispanic, went into the house in Las Vegas and
demanded money. They then tied up Cole's mother and left with the boy.

Police believe he may have been taken because his grandfather,
Clemens Fred Tinnemeyer, 51, owed Latino methamphetamine dealers
between $8m and $20m (UKP 4.6m-UKP 11.6m). Last night Tinnemeyer was
in custody being questioned by police; he is a legal bankrupt and was
believed to be travelling in a beige-and-gold Winnebago motor trailer
when he was arrested yesterday in Riverside over the Nevada-California border.

Las Vegas police captain Vincent Cannito said the case involved
significant amounts of money and drugs and that there was a definite
link between the family and drug deals. Law enforcement agencies said
they were searching several locations in north east Las Vegas, and
that, having arrested a second man, they were now looking for a
third, Jesus Gasterone.

'The investigation has taken different aspects some of which involve
family members, some friends of the family. There's a strong network
within a very close proximity,' Cannito said. Investigators had
issued an 'amber alert' for the missing boy to police departments on
routes from Las Vegas to Mexico but withdrew it yesterday, saying its
effectiveness had run its course.

According to early reports, Tinnemeyer has worked as a carpenter for
more than two decades. He has not been in contact with his family
since May and was reported missing last month.

The abduction happened when three men knocked on the door of the
house where Cole Puffinburger lived. After tying up his mother and
her boyfriend, they ransacked the house and then took Cole. Last
night the boy's father appealed for his son's release. 'It is beyond
me why anyone would do something so cruel to anyone, let alone a
little boy,' said Robert Puffinburger, a civil engineer. 'All I want
is for them to bring him home. I don't care about the rest of it.
Just let him go somewhere. Drop him off. I don't care. Just keep him safe.'

The Mexican-run drug trade uses transport corridors though New Mexico
and Arizona to Las Vegas, and then on to markets in the Midwest and
beyond. Investigators said traffickers usually seized cars and other
assets to recoup money. But they also fear Cole's abduction is a sign
that the grotesque violence that characterises the battle for control
of Mexico's drug trade could be seeping across the border into the US.

An attempted crackdown by authorities since August appears to have
triggered a dramatic escalation in violence, with 387 people killed
in the first two weeks of October and gangs resorting to torture and
beheadings. Even women and children are targets in the daily ritual
of revenge killings.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the border
turf war is primarily between the Tijuana-based cartel of the
Arellano Felix brothers, the Juarez cartel, based across Chihuahua
state and led by the Carrillo Fuentes family, and the Sinaloa gang,
led by Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman.

'The pressure [from the authorities] that's being put upon drug
cartels in Mexico has caused an escalation in violence,' said DEA
spokeswoman Sarah Pullen last week. 'It's horrific. If you look at
what's happened with many of the beheadings down there, the killings
are definitely to send a message.'

On Friday, President George W Bush's top drug enforcement officer,
John Walters, warned that Mexico's cartels were now entering the US
to make their attacks. 'They come across and kidnap, murder and carry
out assassinations,' he said. 'They do not respect the border.'

Walters sent a direct message to the traffickers: 'They have a
choice: come in and face justice, or die.'

In one incident last week six people were lined up against a wall and
shot in Ciudad Juarez, directly across the border from El Paso,
Texas. The assassins fired more than 100 bullets and left a note
warning: 'Message for all rats, this will continue.'

One of the victims blamed a drug cartel for the killings before he
died, saying he had been accused by his murderers of selling drugs
for a rival gang.

The abduction has left the Las Vegas neighbourhood of Cherry Grove
Avenue fearful. The victim's next-door neighbour, Guadaloupe Negrete,
said parents in the area were anxious.

Cole Puffinburger has now become an unwitting trophy in an escalating war