MEXICO CITY — A college student and mother who was police chief in a violent Mexican border town has been fired for abandoning her post, local government officials said Monday.
The government of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, in northern Chihuahua state, will "remove Marisol Valles Garcia, head of the office of public security, from her post," an official statement said.
A relative of Valles said last week that the 20-year-old had fled to the United States seeking asylum.
She had "received death threats from a criminal group that wanted to force her to work for them," the relative told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Local government minister Andres Morales said he had no information about the threats, speaking on Formato 21 radio Monday.
"We want to know if she's OK," he added.
Valles took over as police chief in the town of 10,000 inhabitants near Mexico's most violent city of Ciudad Juarez in October after all other candidates dropped out following the assassination of the mayor and his son.
The Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels are engaged in a bitter fight for control of Ciudad Juarez and its surrounding towns, key points to smuggle illegal drugs into the lucrative US market.
Last year, some 3,100 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez, population 1.2 million, in violence authorities blame on the drug trade.
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