EL PASO, Texas – When he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, Army Spc. Richard Torres was carrying a small arsenal in his car: an AR-15 assault rifle, a .45-caliber handgun, 171 rounds of ammunition, several cartridges and three knives.
At a checkpoint, Torres didn't try to hide the weapons. But he insisted he hadn't meant to cross the border with the guns, which in Mexico are restricted for use only by the military. While searching for parking in El Paso, Torres said, he inadvertently drove onto a bridge leading to Mexico and couldn't turn around.
Torres, an Iraq war veteran, is in a Mexican jail while a judge decides whether to believe his account: that an experienced soldier accidentally ended up in a border town where drug cartels pay top dollar for exactly the kind of high-powered weapons he happened to have.
“I want to go home. I just want to go,” Torres, 25, said last week at the jail in Ciudad Juarez.
Prosecutors have said only that the arrest reflected the government's commitment to battling “every type of delinquency and organized crime.”
Torres said he had been driving all night to get from Fort Hood, in central Texas, to Fresno, where his mother lives. He planned to celebrate her birthday and put the weapons in storage while he deployed to Honduras to join the war on drugs. The guns were Torres' personal property and not required for his military duties.
He arrived in El Paso just after sunrise, he said, and decided to park, walk into Ciudad Juarez for breakfast, then get back on the road.
During his search for a parking space, a gas station attendant seemed to direct him toward the bridge, Torres said. He crossed the Rio Grande and became concerned when he drove past signs warning him he was about to leave the United States.
“Entering Mexico 1/2 mile,” one green placard reads.
“WARNING,” a larger sign reads, “ILLEGAL TO CARRY FIREARMS/AMMUNITION INTO MEXICO. PENALTY – PRISON.”
By then, Torres said, he had passed the only U-turn areas on the bridge, and it was too late to turn around because he had driven into vehicle-inspection lanes enclosed by concrete barriers.
He sought help from a Mexican border guard, who told him he could turn around farther into Mexico. But 15 feet later, Mexican federal police stopped his car at a checkpoint. Torres, who doesn't speak Spanish, said he showed them the guns and his Army ID.
He was arrested and initially charged with smuggling illegal weapons, as well as possession of restricted guns and cartridges. He said he faces only the gun-possession charge.
Court documents in Mexico aren't public, and the U.S. consulate isn't authorized to discuss his case. Investigators with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives concluded Torres wasn't smuggling weapons into Mexico to sell them. An ATF spokesman said the agency reported its findings to Mexican authorities.
