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Local, state and Federal investigators continue to press their case concerning missing 3-year-old Briant Rodriguez; this after the child was reportedly kidnapped during a home invasion in San Bernardino, CA. Rodriguez's mother, Maria Rosalina Millan, reported that at 2:30 PM last Sunday two armed Hispanic men between the ages of 18 and 24 burst through her front door, tied her and her five children up, and then ransacked their home.
Millan reported that her husband was at work at the time and that within 20 minutes the two assailants fled the home with stolen cash and other family possessions, to include a cel phone, taking young Briant Rodriguez with them. As they left, one of the kidnappers shouted, "I'm going to take the kid to Mexico and I'm going to kill him," further telling Millan not to call the police. Millan and her family have only lived in the home for the past three months, causing investigators to consider the background of the former residents as they seek a motive for the kidnapping. As the kidnappers are not believed to have left a ransom note, the stolen cel phone may be the only means the victim's family and authorities have to contact the men holding the 3-year-old.
This case brings to mind the October 2008, home invasion and kidnapping of six-year-old Cole Puffinburger from his Las Vegas, Nevada home, one done under circumstances similar to that of Rodriguez.. Puffinberger's home was also ransacked and its residents (Puffinburger's mother and her boyfriend) were tied up before the assailants kidnapped the young boy. In that case investigators quickly identified Puffinburger's grandfather, 51-year-old Clemens Tinnemeyer, alleged at that time to have stolen millions of dollars from Mexican drug dealers, as the likely motive behind Puffinburger's kidnapping, an act that was believed to be a direct message from the "south of the border" drug cartel to Tinnemeyer, i.e., "give our money back or else." In that case investigators believed methamphetamine the drug of choice that was being moved across the local international border by the drug cartel members and that Tinnemeyer was a money man for the cartel. Puffinburger was recovered alive at a downtown Las Vegas bus stop some 87 hours after his kidnapping. His kidnappers probably released him due, in part, to the pressure being placed on the local illegal drug community, with dozens of search warrants served and many arrests made in the search for the kidnap victim. It was a simple cost-benefit analysis for the kidnappers, "too much law enforcement pressure to obtain the release of the boy, therefore release him and reduce the pressure on them."
Many cities in the U.S. have experienced an increase in Mexican drug cartel-related activities, to include kidnappings. The use of kidnappings for ransom and even for revenge purposes has caused Phoenix, Arizona, to be second only to Mexico City as the kidnapping capitol of the world. While some U.S. authorities will acknowledge approximately 200 stranger abductions in America last year, others point out that there were over 370 "known or reported" kidnappings in Phoenix last year alone!
Meanwhile, in the case of missing 3-year-old Briant Rodriguez, investigators must consider drug-related activities as a possible motive for his kidnapping, this as the overall statistics concerning such events would seem to support such a theory. For Rodriguez, like Cole Puffinburger and many before them, the clock is ticking against investigators and once again the life of a young boy hangs in the balance. If drugs and drug cartels are involved, there may be secret negotiations going on between family members, the authorities, and the cartel members to bring about the safe release of young Briant. It appears, however, that Mexican drug cartels are here in the U.S. to stay, and kidnappings such as these are just the tip of the ever growing iceberg that looms across the southern part of America, slowly encroaching, like the ice age, across our entire country.
UPDATE: 5/16/09: Little Briant Rodriguez was recovered alive and well wandering the streets of Mexicali, a town just south of the US/Mexican border. His head had been shaved, apparently to change his appearance from the photographs being used to find him, this while investigators were allegedly closing in on his kidnappers. What remains to be determined is the motive for his kidnapping and the reason his kidnappers released him.
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