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MEXICO BORDER
ZAPATA COUNTY
One last goodbye
Four run over, killed Bystanders dead after wild battle ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by César G. Rodriguez | The Zapata Times
As pallbearers carry the casket outside Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Webb County Sheriff’s Office deputies, Zapata County Sheriff’s Office deputies, Border Patrol agents, Zapata County constables and Texas game wardens salute Cesar Cuellar on Friday.
2,500 pay their respects to Deputy Cesar Cuellar Jr. By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Zapata County laid to rest one of its own Friday morning. More than 600 people visited Rose Garden Funeral Home to say their final goodbyes to Cesar Cuellar Jr., the Webb County Sheriff ’s Office’s deputy fatally shot by a Laredo police officer Monday. Relatives estimated that between Thursday and Friday, about 2,500 people stopped by at the chapel to pay their respect. Sobbing was inevitable. “They took him away from me,” cried out Cuellar’s grandmother San Juana Arambula as she walked outside the funeral home. “He was my little baby.” Escorted by area law enforcement agencies, the funeral procession departed to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church for mass. Father Agustin Escalante spoke words of comfort to the audience. He said Cuellar be-
longed to Christ because he was baptized when he was a child. “Not even the hands of death can take us away from Jesus,” Escalante said. “For those who live in Jesus, life does not end here … We’re in pain. We’re crying during these difficult times, but Jesus is with us.” Cuellar received full honors from the Webb County Sheriff ’s Office, where he had been working since October. However, his law enforcement career began with the Zapata County Sheriff ’s Office. A few of his former colleagues were there. “Growing up as a young man, he always looked up at the uniform, to law enforcement,” said his father Cesar Cuellar Sr. Cuellar had law enforcement going through his veins because he loved to serve and protect the community, his father said. “Through his years growing up, he was an individual that
See CUELLAR PAGE 12A
Photo by César G. Rodriguez | The Zapata Times
A wreath and photo of Cesar Cuellar are displayed at the entrance to the chapel at Rose Garden Funeral Home in Zapata on Friday.
MEXICO CITY — A wild running gun battle between Mexican soldiers and gunmen in the border city of Reynosa resulted in the deaths of four bystanders after a military vehicle took a spray of gunfire and crashed into a taco stand. The dead were apparently customers at the taco stand in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. They included a 20year-old mother and her 4month-old baby. Four other bystanders were wounded, as were an unspecified number of army personnel. The government of the northern state of Tamaulipas said Thursday in a press statement that it regretted the deaths, and blamed the gunmen for the attack. The army patrol was pursuing a five-vehicle convoy of armed suspects late Wednesday when a sport utility vehicle unexpectedly joined the confrontation. Occupants of the SUV shot out the windshield of a military patrol truck and crashed into it. The force of the impact and the loss of visibility from the shotout windshield led the military vehicle to crash into the stand and two nearby vehicles. Photos showed the metal stand with a tin roof was nearly collapsed by the force of the crash. The gunmen in the SUV fled, but police found eight rifles in the vehicle. Reynosa is dominated by factions of the Gulf drug cartel, which has been known for mounting large-scale, sophisticated attacks on law enforcement and military personnel.
SUPREME COURT
Texas abortion law scrutinized By MARK SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is taking on its first abortion case in eight years, a dispute over state regulation of abortion clinics. The justices said Friday they will hear arguments over a Texas law that would leave about 10 abortion clinics open across the state. A decision should come by late June, four months before the presidential election. The high court previously blocked parts of the Texas law. The court took no action on a separate appeal from Mississippi, where a
state law would close the only abortion clinic, in Jackson. Arguments will take place in February or March. States have enacted a wave of measures in recent years that have placed restrictions on when in a pregnancy abortions may be performed, imposed limits on abortions using drugs instead of surgery and raised standards for clinics and the doctors who work in them. The new case concerns the last category. In Texas, the fight is over two provisions of the law that Gov. Rick Perry signed in 2013. One requires abortion facilities to be constructed like surgical centers. The other
allows doctors to perform abortions at clinics only if they have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Backers of the regulations say they are commonsense measures intended to protect women. Abortion rights groups say the regulations have only one aim: to make it harder, if not impossible, for women to get abortions in Texas. “Texans should have full freedom to prioritize women’s health and safety over the bottom line of abortionists,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Steven H. Aden. But Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, dis-
agreed about the purpose of the law. “This law does not advance women’s health and in fact undermines it,” Northup said. Texas had 41 abortion clinics before the clinic law. More than half of those closed when the admitting privileges requirement was allowed to take effect. Nineteen clinics remain. Northup said the effect of the law has been to increase wait times for women in the Dallas area from an average of five days to 20 days. The focus of the dispute at the Supreme Court is whether the law imposes what the court has called an
See LAW PAGE 12A
Photo by Zach Gibson | New York Times
The Supreme Court building is shown in Washington, Nov. 6. The Supreme Court will take up a new case regarding abortion.