ABC News
November 27, 2013
A teenage U.S. citizen who acknowledged being a drug-cartel killer has finished his three-year juvenile-offender term for homicide, kidnapping and drug and weapons possession.
The interior secretary of southern Morelos state, Jorge Messeguer, told Milenio television the teen has been released and taken to an airport to be sent to the United States, where he has family.
Jorge Messeguer said Edgar Jimenez Lugo would apparently go to a facility, “one of these centers for support, for aid” in San Antonio, Texas. His office did not immediately respond to requests for further information.
It does not appear that Jimenez Lugo faces any charges in the United States. The U.S. Embassy said it would not publicly discuss the case due to privacy considerations.
The embassy said in a statement it was “closely coordinating with our Mexican counterparts and appropriate authorities in the United States” regarding his release.
Jimenez was popularly known in Mexico as “Ponchis,” which roughly translates as “husky,” a nickname a relative has said his family gave him because he was a pudgy child.
In 2011 at the age of 14, Jimenez Lugo confessed to killing four people whose beheaded bodies were found suspended from a bridge.