EL PASO, Texas -- A charred body was found inside a burning car just outside the edge of a housing subdivision in Horizon City Wednesday. Neighbors in the area said the cartel is to blame.

Charred desert brush was all that was left just hours after a custodian from Eastlake High School reported a car on fire about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

"They had some kids coming over here and the kids had found it, it was a burnt car with a burnt body inside," said Brendalyn Sellars, who lives nearby.

Crime scene tape roped off the area just 300 yards from a Horizon City neighborhood. Sheriff’s investigators were looking for clues into exactly what happened, but neighbors say it doesn't take a detective to know this person’s death was at the hands of the drug cartel.

"It looked clean cut. They knew exactly what they were doing. They had it burnt to a crisp, but it was burnt fast," said Sellars.

Investigators are not linking the two crimes, but residents worry that this is not the first time the cartel has turned Horizon into a crime scene. Both times the crime played out in daylight and in front of children.

"You can see the kids already coming and playing in here, there's kids always going in the dirt," said Sellars.

Last September, 30-year-old Sergio Saucedo was kidnapped from his Horizon home at gunpoint in full view of children getting off a school bus.

He was found days later brutally murdered in Juarez. The reason for his death according to investigators, Border Patrol agents seized a load of drugs from Saucedo that belonged to the cartel.

"I always thought it was really safe out here," said Sellars.

Sellars is now thinking twice and said even a sheriff deputy, who's a friend, said it may not be the safest place to live.

"If you don't have alarms right now get one. She says you don't know half the stuff we get calls for," said Sellars.

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