MEXICO CITY, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Edgar Jimenez Lugo, the San Diego-born teenage drug cartel hit man, was freed in Mexico Tuesday and was en route to the United States, Mexican officials said.
Lugo, 17, who admitted killing four people for the Beltran Leyva cartel, was released from a juvenile detention center in Morelos state at 2:30 a.m. and was scheduled to fly to San Antonio where he has family, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The newspaper said Jorge Vicente Messeguer Guillen, the Morelos government secretary, told Mexico's Milenio news channel Lugo had served all but about a week of his three-year sentence. The youth was to be sent to a "support center" where he would be treated as a "boarder," not as an inmate, the Times said.
"We are aware of Edgar Lugo's upcoming release by the Mexican authorities following completion of his sentence," a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in a statement. "We are closely coordinating with our Mexican counterparts and appropriate authorities in the United States regarding Edgar Lugo's release. Due to privacy considerations, we do not publicly discuss details of matters involving U.S. citizens."
He was 14 when arrested in December 2010. He told reporters he had been working for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel in Jiutepec and was paid $200 a week for duties that included cutting the throats of four people -- the first when he was just 11 -- under the threat of being killed himself if he didn't do as he was told.
The youth came from a dysfunctional family and ended up in Mexico when his grandmother was appointed his legal guardian. She died in 2004.
