Suspected Hit Man Arrested In Colorado

Police arrested a man Friday who they say shot and killed the publisher of a northern Mexican newspaper in a hit ordered by a jailed drug lord.

Rolando Arroyo Palacios was taken into custody in San Luis Rio, Colo., about 20 miles south of Yuma, Ariz., Sonora state Attorney General Rolando Tavares said.

Tavares said Arroyo was hired by the brother of a local drug lord, Jaime Gonzalez Gutierrez. The drug lord allegedly had been angered by articles written about him by the publisher of La Prensa newspaper, Benjamin Flores Gonzalez.

The drug trafficker allegedly had offered through a lawyer to buy the silence of Flores, who had written that Gonzalez was enjoying special treatment in jail.

“The lawyer said he should accept the money, or if he didn’t he would pay the consequences,” Tavares said.