Mexico in Brief: Kindergarten teacher tries to calm kids as deadly gunfight rages outside

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — A cellphone video of a kindergarten teacher trying to calm her students down as Mexican police and a group of alleged kidnappers engage in a deadly gunfight outside is going viral on social media.

“Children, they’re fireworks … stay calm. Mary Lou, it’s nothing, sweetie. Don’t cry. Stay calm, stay calm. They’re fireworks, sweetheart. They’re fireworks, Mary Lou. Stay calm, stay calm sweetie. Yes, sweetheart, they’re fireworks from the church. Stay calm, stay calm,” the teacher says in the video that began to circulate on the web last Friday.

Friday’s firefight took place next door to the Cipriano Campos preschool in the Las Huertas neighborhood of Tlaquepaque, Jalisco. The shots left two state police officers and one civilian dead. Six more bodies — five men and one woman who had been kidnapped — were found inside a house that was the target of the police raid, Mexican media reported.

Border Report tried to interview school officials on Monday but no one answered the phone at the preschool.

Car bomb set off in front of National Guard office in Guanajuato state

A car bomb exploded Sunday evening near the Mexican National Guard headquarters in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexican media reported. No one was killed or injured during the explosion.

The detonation occurred at 6:45 p.m. and was heard up to 3 kilometers away in neighborhoods and suburbs like Rancho Seco, Romeral and Michinelas, Periodico Correo reported.

Firefighters and Civil Protection officers were called to the scene to extinguish the fire and investigate the explosion. The attack took place days after the father of alleged organized crime leader Jose Antonio Yepes (a.k.a. “El Marro,” or the Sledgehammer) was arrested by federal authorities in Celaya.

Yepes allegedly leads the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, which is engaged in a bloody battle for control of organized crime in the state of Guanajuato with the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG), according to Mexican authorities.

On Monday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called the incident “propaganda” on the part of organized crime. The official version is that someone parked a car, torched it, and the car exploded.