JUAREZ, Mexico (CNN) -- Jose Molinar knew something wasn't right. He hadn't heard from his wife for a few hours, which was not sitting well with him.
Marisella Molinar worked as a secretary for a top prosecutor in Juarez, Mexico, Jesus Huerta Yedra. She was employed in the office for more than 10 years and though she lived across the border in El Paso, Texas, with her husband, she drove about 20 minutes over the Juarez-El Paso border every day to the job she loved.
The growing violence over rival drug cartels had concerned the couple, but Mexico was a part of their lives and they were sure the violence stayed between rival drug gangs, who were fighting over a lucrative drug route into the United States.
Without fail, Marisella Molinar would call her husband every day when she arrived to work, went out for lunch and when she was leaving the office.
But on December 3, 2008, by around 5:30 p.m., Jose Molinar still hadn't heard from his wife. He called the office in Mexico and was told she was giving her boss a ride over the border so he could do some Christmas shopping. Jose Molinar turned on his television, and his life changed forever.
"As soon as the image came up, I saw her truck," said Molinar, who was watching the news out of Juarez, "and I knew what happened right then and there."
Marisella Molinar was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her passenger, Jesus Huerta Yedra, was a target of the cartels that day. As Molinar's car was about a mile away from the border crossing back to the United States, gunmen walked up to her car and fired 85 rounds from an AK-47 into their intended target. One shot hit Marisella Molinar, a mother of two and proud grandmother, in the chest, killing her instantly.
"She wasn't involved, she didn't have anything to do with this!" said Jose Molinar in a recent interview with CNN. "She was the guy's secretary and she was giving him a ride to meet his wife here in El Paso who was Christmas shopping."
But instead of making it home to help her husband hang Christmas lights, Marisella Molinar became yet another victim in the drug war taking place just steps from the U.S. border.
The violence generated by the war of the drug cartels for control of drug routes translated last year into some 6,000 killings. More than 1,600 of them occurred in Juarez, three times more than the most murderous city in the United States. This year, in two months, the body count in Juarez is 400.
Mexican military and police in riot gear now patrol the once popular streets of Juarez. Gone are the Americans shopping, dining and partying. The bars and restaurants are shuttered -- many closed for good. Americans don't come here anymore.
U.S. families feel sting of Mexico's drug violence - CNN.com