Beheaded people for a Mexican drug cartel while under the influence of narcotics.

teenager captured international headlines this month after admitting that he beheaded people for a Mexican drug cartel while under the influence of narcotics. Fourteen years ago, that same boy began his life in San Diego with cocaine in his system.Edgar Jimenez Lugo’s arrest and confession show what can happen when children — especially orphans or those from unstable families — become involved in the drug underworld. It’s a problem authorities on both sides of the border are fighting.



More than 32,000 people have died in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón launched an unprecedented war on that nation’s drug traffickers and organized crime in 2006.



Still, many Mexicans were stunned by the specter of child recruits being used as hitmen for cartels, said Ursula Oswald, an analyst of social vulnerabilities at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cuernavaca.



“Everybody suspected but wasn’t sure this existed, until you have this case,” Oswald said.



Edgar’s story started in 1996 in San Diego, where his birth wasn’t greeted with the typical family fanfare. His parents were leading a tumultuous life of drug addiction, alcoholism and domestic violence.



In the months before he was born, his father, David Antonio Jimenez Solis, was jailed for spousal abuse. He later acknowledged to a probation officer that he snorted cocaine daily, smoked marijuana and drank a six-pack of beer each day.



Edgar’s mother, Yolanda Jimenez Lugo, told her probation officer that she suffered from depression and used cocaine to boost her spirits and energy.



When Edgar was born and tested positive for cocaine in the hospital, child welfare workers immediately took him from his mother, along with five of his siblings, and put them in foster care.



“Edgar hardly knew his mother,” a relative of Yolanda’s recalled last week.



By the time Edgar was 18 months old, his mother was arrested at a drug house in southeastern San Diego for possession of rock cocaine. The next month, Edgar and his siblings were sent to live with their paternal grandmother, Carmen Solis Gil, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a tourism destination about 40 miles south of Mexico City.



She died about six years ago — around the time that Edgar was getting into fights in the second grade, eventually being expelled after he punched a girl.



“When Doña Carmen was alive, those kids didn’t get in trouble,” Yolanda’s relative said. “Everything started coming apart when she died.”



The details about Edgar and his family come from official documents and interviews in San Diego and Mexico with relatives, friends, neighbors and authorities.



But how he became part of a gang associated with the splintered Beltran Leyva cartel remains unclear.



What is known is that the Mexican army arrested Edgar on Dec. 2 at the airport near Cuernavaca. The military then twice paraded him before a throng of news media, first at the airport and then the next day in Mexico City.



His place in the spotlight followed the posting of a YouTube video last month showing teens — including one called “El Ponchis,” Edgar’s nickname — boasting about decapitating cartel enemies. The footage created a buzz throughout Mexico and led to a military hunt for the youthful hitmen.DISCLAIMER:Text may be subject to copyright.This blog does not claim copyright to any such text. Copyright remains with the original copyright holder.