Junior Narco Records Himself Doming Opp

Mexican teenagers as young as 15 are killing rivals for a few hundred dollars in a brutal drug war on the U.S. border that is increasingly sucking in young people.

Feuding gangs in the violent cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez prize teenage drug cartel members, known as “narco juniors”, because they give the attacks an added element of surprise and because they can’t be given long prison sentences, police and social workers say.

“There are lots of us and we get $300 for each kill,” said 17-year-old Eduardo, a middle-class student who was arrested in December after an army raid on a drug safe house in Tijuana.

“I had been doing it for about five months, it was easy money,” he told G√ Mexico in a police detention center, wearing designer clothing. Police said he killed at least one man.