A South Texas prosecutor is blaming a Mexican drug cartel for burning down a house belonging to one of his narcotics investigators.
Starr County District Attorney Omar Escobar said Wednesday the fire was deliberately set early Tuesday using an accelerant. The home was under construction just west of Rio Grande City.
Escobar said the narcotics investigator was working with the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, a collaboration of local and federal agencies. Escobar said his office received an unspecified threat late last year from elements of the Gulf Cartel operating across the Rio Grande in Camargo, Mexico. The message conveyed through informants was to ease up on drug seizures.
Escobar said it will only make his office work more aggressively.
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