Shooting of Cabanas rivets Mexico

• Los Angeles Times, Thursday, January 28, 2010 12:30 PM

Club America's Paraguayan striker Salvador Cabanas lay in an induced coma in a Mexico City hospital after surgeons unsuccessfully attempted to extract a bullet that had been fired into his head in the men's room of a night club called Bar Bar early Monday morning. He was listed in grave but stable condition.

Ken Ellingwood reports from Mexico City that the shooting has riveted soccer-mad Mexico, pushing aside the Haitian disaster and other news, such as election-year political maneuvering: "It has the makings of a pulp novel: A star professional soccer player is shot and gravely wounded in a shady wee-hours bar. The main witness is a skimpily clad blond dancer, the top suspects a businessman known as "the Model" and his supposed bodyguard.

Chief Mexico City prosecutor Miguel Angel Mancera identified one of the suspects as Jose J. Balderas Garza, known as "J.J." or "the Model," about whom little was known except that he worked in the night club business and went to Bar Bar. The second man was said to be his bodyguard and was identified as Eduardo Garcia Alanis. The witness is a Cuban dancer.

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