Mexican beauty queen arrested in gun-filled truck

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-24 22:53

GUADALAJARA, Mexico -- A reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled with guns and ammunition, police say.

In this two image composite, Laura Zuniga is crowned as Miss Sinaloa state at left in the city of Mazatlan, Mexico July 8, 2008 and is shown to the press with unidentified gunmen after her arrest in the city of Zapopan, Mexico Tuesday Dec. 23, 2008. Police said Zuniga who was stopped at a checkpoint, was riding in one of two trucks with seven men, where soldiers found a large stash of weapons and some $53,300 in US currency. [Agencies]

Miss Sinaloa 2008 Laura Zuniga stared at the ground, with her flowing dark hair concealing her face, as she stood squeezed between seven alleged gunmen lined up before journalists. Soldiers wearing ski masks guarded the 23-year-old model and the suspects.

Zuniga was arrested shortly before midnight on Monday at a military checkpoint in Zapopan, just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara, said Jalisco state police director, Francisco Alejandro Solorio.

Zuniga was riding in one of two trucks, where soldiers found a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in US currency, Solorio said Tuesday.

State police identified one of the men caught with her as the brother of an alleged drug trafficker from Ciudad Juarez, a city on the US border, and said the man appeared to have been her boyfriend.

Zuniga told police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia with the men to go shopping, Solorio said.

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