A regional boss of the Zetas laughed as he used an axe to chop up a 6-year-old girl in front of her bawling parents, telling the father it was “so you can remember me,” an eyewitness testified Wednesday at the San Antonio trial of the accused cartel figure.

Marciano “Chano” Millan Vasquez then ordered the girl’s parents hacked to death, said the witness, a 39-year-old convicted marijuana trafficker.

Millan, arrested last year in San Antonio, is on trial for killing in furtherance of drug-trafficking crimes, among an array of other charges. Witnesses who once worked with high-ranking Zetas have described being told of Millan’s involvement in massacres across Mexico’s Coahuila state, but Wednesday’s witness was the first to testify he saw people die at Millan’s hands and on his orders — 18 in all.

Most of them were killed in the same gory way: chopped up with an axe, he said, with the body parts then burned in barrels.

The Express-News is not identifying the witness at the request of the judge and lawyers in the case due to the high potential of cartel retaliation against his family.

The trafficker said he was kidnapped in February 2013 and held for 13 days, blamed for the loss of a marijuana load seized by the U.S. Border Patrol.

The Zetas took him to locations in and around Piedras Negras, which borders Eagle Pass, and forced him to watch “so I could tell my family that if I didn’t get the money (he owed), that is what would happen to me and them,” he testified, his voice breaking.

The witness said Millan was the Zetas commander of operations in Piedras Negras and was present for all but one of the executions, some of which took place at two houses in Piedras Negras, a junkyard, an abandoned ranch house and near a riverbank.

He cried as Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Galdo coaxed answers from him about the deaths, saying in some cases, the victims were blindfolded and kneeling, and he was also forced to kneel. His blindfold was removed so he could watch. The victims included men, women and children, he said.

At one of the houses, there was “a little girl, a woman and a man” held captive in the patio, the witness said. A barrel containing fire was nearby. The girl was 6, he said.

“Chano began,” the witness said. “He got the axe and cut off her knee and an arm. … She would cry. She would scream.”

The witness said Millan laughed and told the father, “‘So you’ll remember me.’”

“They cut her all up in pieces and burned her.”

Asked if the father could look away, the witness said, “No. They would grab him by the hair so he would see.”

Galdo asked who grabbed the father’s hair.

“Chano and Enano,” the witness said, referring to Millan and another regional Zetas boss by their nicknames.

The witness also testified about two executions of adolescents or teens who sold newspapers at stop lights in Piedras Negras. In one, four were dismembered and burned. Two were slain the same way in another incident. The Zetas suspected them of being spies for a rival cartel, he said.

The witness also recounted being taken to a river bed near Piedras Negras, where Zetas delivered three men suspected of being with Mexico’s military and made them kneel. The witness said Millan and other commanders were there with the cartel’s top leaders, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, also known as “Z-40” or “Cuarenta,” and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, or “Z-42.”

The witness said he heard Millan say, “Hay que darles piso ” — “We’ve got to kill them.” The witness said he heard gunshots after he was taken away and didn’t see the trio get killed.

While captive, he was allowed to text his family and acquaintances to plead for money so he could be released, he said. One of his relatives sold her house to provide $20,000. It was enough to free him, but Millan told him he had to come up with another $100,000 — “a fine, because I couldn’t come up with the $20,000 fast enough,” the witness said.

He had been moving marijuana belonging to Millan under duress, he said — he was a low-level trafficker in the Ciudad Acuña area when he and six other men were abducted and pressed into the cartel’s service.

“The first (guy) said he didn’t want to. They said, ‘That’s fine.’ He turned around, and they shot him. After that, the rest of us agreed,” the witness said.

He said the Zetas enjoyed free rein in northern Coahuila. He recounted how twice after being stopped while delivering drug cash, he told the officers that he had a delivery for Millan, and the cops escorted him the rest of the way.

At one point, prosecutors asked the witness if he could identify the defendant. The witness stood up and scanned the courtroom, not looked directly at Millan. Minutes went by before he pointed towards the defense table after further prodding and identified Millan.

Galdo later asked the witness if he took so long to point out Millan because the defendant, in a suit and wearing glasses, looked different in 2013.

“I’m afraid for my family,” the witness replied, crying.

He had failed to gather the $100,000 he owed after his release. He stalled his cartel bosses, then crossed into the United States with his father and was arrested in March 2013. He pleaded guilty to federal marijuana charges and awaits sentencing.

gcontreras@express-news.net



