of the shooting reached the Juarez police, a separate set of gunmen at the birthday party observed a pregnant U.S. consulate employee named Lesley Ann Enriquez climb behind the wheel of her white Toyota SUV and drive off toward her home in El Paso. Her husband, Arthur Redelfs, a detention officer at the El Paso County jail, was in the passenger seat. As the American couple neared the Juarez City Hall, the gunmen opened fire. It was broad daylight. Witnesses described the SUV, bearing Texas plates, drifting for several feet and crashing near the entrance to the Stanton Street Bridge that links Juarez to El Paso. Enriquez and Redelfs were killed. The couple’s infant daughter was in the back seat, and survived. Authorities were quick to identify thethree homicides as coordinated assassinations, the first and only attack on U.S. diplomatic personnel in Juarez.

The brazen triple homicide made international news and spurred doubts that Mexico is capable of quelling the violence among drug-trafficking organizations in Juarez. The White House declared in a statement that President Obama was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the consulate murders. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seized on the attacks to reaffirm U.S. policy of cooperating with the Mexican government “to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico.”

Within 24 hours of the attacks, Chihuahua officials announced that initial evidence, corroborated by U.S. intelligence, indicated the assassins were members of Barrio Azteca, a street gang linked to the Juarez Cartel. Speculation was rife that the attacks were retaliation for U.S.