Mexican drug gang murders the unarmed woman who was brave enough to take police chief job men didn't want



Gunned down: Police chief Hermila Garcia, who was shot and killed by assassins in Meoqui, northern Mexico

Mexico is today mourning the death of a female police chief, the latest victim of a seemingly unending drug war between gangsters and the authorities.

Hermila Garcia, 38, became the top law enforcement officer in the town of Meoqui only two months ago.

One of a small number of women who have had the bravery to take on the drug cartels, she was gunned down at 7.20am on Monday.

She was attacked as she drove to work by herself.

Garcia, a lawyer by profession and single with no children, was one of a handful of women who have taken leadership roles in police departments in towns where men have stayed away because of fear.

The most high profile of these is 20-year-old Marisol Valles Garcia, a student who became police chief of Praxedis, in the Juarez valley, also in the state of Chihuahua.

'La Jefa', as she was known, didn't carry weapons or have bodyguards. But her security ideology has proven fallible.

'If you don't owe anything, you don't fear anything,' she was fond of saying when asked why she didn't have security.

Mexico's drug violence has claimed almost 30,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and sent about 45,000 soldiers to fight the cartels.

Some wondered if Hermila Garcia's death was a warning from the drug cartels to other women, like Marisol Valles Garcia, who have taken on leading roles in law enforcement. - especially in Chihuahua. The state is home to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent drug war city.



Warning? Police chief Hermila Garcia's body lies covered with a blanket by the open door of her car as investigators gather information in Meoqui

Crime scene: Hermila's covered body lies next to her car after the hit

Chihuahua has become Mexico's most violent state since Calderon launched his drug war four years ago.

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Violence in Chihuahua is due to struggles between rival drug cartels over lucrative smuggling routes, as well as police operations against the cartels.

In and around Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, some 7,200 people have died in drug violence since January 2008, when Mexico's top trafficker Joaquin 'Shorty' Guzman made a push to control the city and its lucrative smuggling routes.



Federal police man a roadblock in Meoqui after Garcia was gunned down on Monday

On patrol: Federal police officers in Meoqui, the increasingly violent town in the border state of Chihuahua, Mexico

Despite the arrest of thousands of suspected gang members in Chihuahua, the crackdown on cartels has provoked a wave of violent crime.

Thousands of jobless young men are fighting over local kidnapping, narcotics and extortion rackets in Mexico's home-grown drug market.

The drug violence is tarnishing the country's international image and worrying Washington and some investors.



Grisly discovery: Members of a forensic team work in a mass grave in Palomas, just across the U.S. border, on Monday. They found 18 bodies in 11 graves

The team works to uncover the bodies near Texas. It is not clear who was buried in the graves or why

In recent months, Meoqui had started to see some of this violence. A once peaceful town, the drug-related death tally has shot up to 40 deaths so far this year.



Meanwhile, Mexican soldiers have uncovered 18 bodies buried on a ranch near the U.S. border.