Mexican Beauty Queen Arrested

(Mexico City) Twenty-three-year-old Mexican beauty queen, Laura Elena Zuniga Huizar (aka Laura Zuniga), was arrested Monday night along with seven men at a police checkpoint in a Guadalajara suburb. Traveling in two SUVs, the group was found to be carrying cell phones, cash, pistols, rifles and ammunition.


Beauty Queen Laura Zuniga and drug traffickers
The checkpoint was established after a tipster told the police that drug traffickers would be moving through the area outside Mexico's second-largest city.

One of the arrested men is linked to the leadership of the Juarez cartel, which operates lucrative smuggling routes into the United States, police said.

"This young woman was the gentleman's girlfriend," Jalisco state Security Minister Luis Carlos Najera said in a radio interview.

The model is the latest well-known figure to be linked to drug traffickers this year in Mexico, where President Felipe Calderon is battling powerful cartels with soldiers and federal police.

Zuniga, a native of the Sinaloa state capital of Cuiliacan, was named Miss Sinaloa in July 2008 and Miss Hispanoamericana last month. Zuniga has reportedly expressed a desire to work for world peace and save the planet by giving kids books and maps and stuff.


[Update 12/29/08]

Zuniga stripped of Miss Hispanoamericana crown.