El Pasoans React As Juarez Homicides Reach 2,000 For The Year

by ABC-7 Reporter Darren Hunt

EL PASO, Texas — Juarez has reached a grim milestone — our sister city has now surpassed 2,000 murders for 2009.

An average of seven people per day are dying just across the border, and that’s difficult for many on this side of the border, including UTEP students, to ignore.

“I kind of feel sad for the citizens over there in Juarez,” said one student.

The number of murders has topped 2,000, 400 more murders than all of last year. This month alone, 206 have already been murdered. The bloodiest month of the year so far has been August, when 337 were killed. By comparison, 294 people were killed all of last year in the city of Houston.

To put the 2,028 murders in perspective, that is enough people to fill all of the seats in UTEP’s Magoffin Auditorium twice. That’s more people than the entire population of Vinton and about half the total number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq.

“No one really goes over there anymore,” said UTEP psychology major Brandi Ribecky. Ribecky said her father runs a maquiladora in Juarez.

“He’s about a block away from the police station so he sees a lot of really ugly stuff every day.”

She said the new murder milestone has her family and her father’s company concerned.

“My mom keeps in touch with him the whole day through phone calls, emails, instant messaging,” Ribecky said.

UTEP student Julio Chavez has family living in Juarez.

“I don’t even think about Juarez as much as I used to, not because I want to ignore it or I don’t like it anymore, but just because it’s too painful,” he said.

Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz told CNN this stretch of extreme violence is now 22 months old, and over that time the violence has simply increased.

He added, “the possibility that it will stop is becoming more remote.”