Stray Bullet from Mexico Wounds El Paso Woman

EL PASO, Texas (AP) _ El Paso’s mayor is appealing for public calm after a woman was wounded while shopping downtown by what appears to be a stray bullet from neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Mayor John Cook tells the El Paso Times “people get struck by lightning, too, and that doesn’t make us stay indoors when there is a rainstorm.”

It remains unclear if the bullet was fired Tuesday during a shootout between alleged carjackers and Juarez police this morning, but the mayor called the incident a “cross-border shooting.”

The woman was struck about a half-mile from the border and about a mile from where the shooting happened. Three El Paso schools were put on lockdown.

Since drug-related violence in Juarez spiked in 2008, bullets have struck El Paso buildings but never a person.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

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