From AL.com: A 13-year-old Huntsville girl was beheaded after she witnessed her grandmother assaulted with a knife and left to die on the ground in a cemetery, court testimony revealed.
The grandmother was associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, a drug-trafficking organization, a Madison County sheriff's investigator testified today.
Just days before Oralia Mendoza and her granddaughter, Mariah Lopez, were killed, Mendoza and three others went to pick up a batch of methamphetamine, Investigator Stacy Rutherford told a judge. After one of her drug cohorts became suspicious, the situation turned deadly.
Israel Palomino, 34, and Yoni Aguilar, 26, are charged with two counts each of capital murder in the slayings of Mendoza and Lopez....
During the early morning hours of June 4, Mendoza was told she and Lopez would be taken somewhere safe.
Instead, Rutherford testified, Palomino and Aguilar drove the woman and her granddaughter to Moon Cemetery on Cave Springs Road. Mendoza and Palomino got out of the car and argued about the drug buy, according to Aguilar's account, which Rutherford recounted in court.
The argument escalated, and Aguilar told police Palomino killed Mendoza. Authorities have said her cause of death was sharp force trauma caused by a knife.
Because Lopez was a witness, the suspects took the girl to a secluded area on nearby Lemley Drive, Rutherford testified. In his statement, Aguilar said Palomino forced him to kill the girl.
Aguilar told investigators he was holding the knife when Palomino came up to him and moved his arm back and forth in a sawing motion. Lopez was beheaded, Rutherford testified.
And the booking for 1 of the thugs:
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