AZMEX EXTRA 1-6-18

AZMEX EXTRA 1 JUN 2018


Ammo stockpile detonates in car at Pilot Travel Center
By Jonathan Clark
Nogales International May 31, 2018 Updated 10 hrs ago (0)

https://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/ammo-stockpile-detonates-in-car-at-pilot-travel-center/article_597f3646-6556-11e8-a5e4-bb5b2229143e.html

The remains of the car sit illuminated in the Pilot Travel Center parking lot Thursday night.
Photo by Jonathan Clark

The car was abandoned on the west side of Pilot Travel Center.
Photo by Jonathan Clark

Bullets and casings litter the ground around the vehicle's front left tire.
Photo by Jonathan Clark

A car loaded with ammunition caught fire outside the Pilot Travel Center in Rio Rico on Thursday night,
setting off a barrage of detonations and sending customers and employees ducking for cover.

Law enforcement at the scene declined to comment, but it appeared that no one was hurt in the incident that began around 7:15 p.m.

Reached by phone, Sheriff Antonio Estrada said the case was being investigated as a possible ammunition smuggling attempt gone awry.
He said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had been summoned to the scene, as had the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force.

The car, a Chevy Cobalt, had Sonoran plates and seemed to be headed south, Estrada said.
Three people were seen walking away from the vehicle, which was loaded with various types of ammunition, he said.

At least two dozen soda cups were placed upside-down throughout the travel center parking lot, apparently marking the location of spent shells, a
s sheriff's deputies, state troopers and personnel from the Rio Rico Fire District secured the scene shortly after 8 p.m.
Dozens more bullets could be seen on the ground around the car.

Elian Castro of Nogales, an employee of the Wendy's restaurant at the travel center, said he was working at the drive-through window at the time of the incident.
He said he saw a car parked with its hood open and the passengers, two men and a woman, checking the vehicle, which was making popping noises.

"Honestly, I thought they blew out their engine or something crazy happened to their motor," he said.

He could also see sparks coming from the undercarriage.
"I just kept working and it kept getting worse and it got louder to the point where I was trying to take orders and I couldn't hear anything at all," Castro said.

At one point a female customer pulled up to the drive-through window.
"As soon as she got there I told her her total and you could straight up here a sound, just like metal hitting metal, and the girl made a face and she drove off, spinning tires."

Soon other cars were fleeing the scene.
"And so they said to get away from the windows because there's bullets inside the car," Castro said.

Meanwhile, his co-worker Sergio Torres was helping to get people outside the building to seek shelter inside.
"A co-worker who was a firefighter, he's like, 'Hey man, you need to put everyone inside because something is happening,'" Torres said.

The two witnesses said the detonations lasted for as long as 10 minutes, steadily increasing in frequency.

Castro said he watched as the three passengers collected items from inside the car, then walked away from the scene as if they had nothing to do with it –
a posture that struck him as suspicious.
The two males walked in the direction of the gas pumps and the woman toward the building, he said, and it appeared that all three were picked up by another vehicle.

He described the passengers as being in their 20s or possibly early 30s. The woman was carrying a zebra bag
and the two men, one of whom was wearing a hat, both had beards, he said.

END