TIJUANA -- The residents of Ejido Chilpancingo have grown accustomed to the petty crime the drug trade brings to their working-class neighborhood. The stolen cars. The house break-ins. The occasional addict slumped on a street corner.

But the stakes grew dramatically higher this month when a citywide killing spree moved into the neighborhood, which lies below the assembly plants at the Otay Mesa border checkpoint.

On Jan. 14, three men eating at a family restaurant were gunned down by a man armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. The next day, a little boy found the corpses of two men lying in a ditch.

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