Car full of weapons lands US soldier in Mexican jail

At a checkpoint, Torres didn't try to hide the weapons. But he insisted he hadn't meant to cross the border with the guns, which in Mexico are restricted for use only by the military. While searching for parking in El Paso, he said, he inadvertently drove onto a bridge leading to Mexico and could not turn around.

Now the Iraq veteran is in a Mexican jail while a judge decides whether to believe his account: that an experienced soldier accidentally ended up in a border town where drug cartels pay top dollar for exactly the kind of high-powered weapons he happened to have.

"I want to go home. I just want to go," Torres said last week at the jail in Ciudad Juarez.

Prosecutors have said only that the arrest reflected the government's commitment to battling "every type of delinquency and organized crime."

Torres, 25, said he had been driving all night to get from Fort Hood, in central Texas, to Fresno, Calif., where his mother lives. He planned to celebrate her birthday and put the weapons in storage while he deployed to Honduras to join the war on drugs. The guns were Torres' personal property and not required for his military duties.

He arrived in El Paso just after sunrise, he said, and decided to park, walk into Ciudad Juarez for breakfast, then get back on the road.

But during his search for a parking space, a gas station attendant seemed to direct him toward the bridge, Torres said. He crossed the Rio Grande and became concerned when he drove past signs warning him he was about to leave the U.S.

"Entering Mexico 1/2 mile," one green placard reads.

"WARNING," a larger sign reads, "ILLEGAL TO CARRY FIREARMS/AMMUNITION INTO MEXICO. PENALTY -PRISON."