Lake Chapala kidnapped victims found, local police being investigated

Relatives of the young artists reported their disappearance since last Tuesday after being intercepted by armed men in Chapala, Jalisco.

The Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office reported Monday that Griselda Gutiérrez Rodríguez and Ángel Adán Martínez López, artists who were intercepted last week by armed men in Lake Chapala, Jalisco, were found alive, according to reports from their families.

As protest began an official announcement of their release was announced

Jalisco: liberan a pareja de artistas plásticos y 6 más en Chapala

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Griselda and Adán were located on an estate, where six other people were also deprived of their liberty, including a man named Wenceslao.

All of them are in good health, as mentioned in the statement.

In total, six men and two women were rescued, according to the official report. The Prosecutor’s Office noted that there were no reports of disappearance in the case of the other five people located next to Griselda, Adán, and Wenceslao.

Governor Enrique Alfaro indicated that there were three arrests, of alleged perpetrators, and the authorities also secured the farm, short and long weapons, bulletproof vests, and vehicles.

“The Office of the Specialized Prosecutor for Missing Persons began investigative work from the moment they learned of the criminal news,” said the Office of the Prosecutor.

“A series of interviews, inquiries, as well as fieldwork, was carried out that allowed an operation to be carried out and the property found. 

The investigations of the Prosecutor’s Office allowed them locate a house in a colony of Ajijic, Chapala, where the kidnapped were. After a series of tactical deployments, yesterday morning it was decided to intervene, with the support of the State Police. It was then that they managed to rescue the kidnapped, six men and two women, and arrest three people who were guarding them

En Chapala rescatan a 8 personas privadas de libertad; hay 3 detenidos

A day after the abduction, Wenceslao Mendoza, an Uber driver who disappeared after dropping off a passenger on June 10 in Ajijic, was also abducted and reported to the police as missing. Mendoza was among those found alive and unharmed.

Monday morning, before the news that the couple and six others had been found, family members of those who have disappeared in Chapala mounted a protest with the support of some 300 community members who marched in silence carrying photos of the missing. When the crowd arrived at municipal headquarters, they lay on the ground in protest.

The demonstrators claimed that 100 people have gone missing in the past two years.

Blanca Jaqueline Trujillo Cuevas, head of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Missing Persons, ruled out that there is a wave of violence in the riverside municipality, as indicated by relatives of the victims, and also considered that it is not a recurring crime.

“First of all, I must point out that there is not a wave of disappearances in Chapala. Obviously, each disappeared person in the state of Jalisco is an important human being to us, who has the legal obligation to search and locate alive, but I do want clarify that in this last week of work only complaints were received were for three people, “said Trujillo Cuevas.

The eight kidnapping victims were placed under the protection of the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Missing Persons to give their statements about the time they were in captivity.

Source: animalpolitico.com, regeneracion.mx, milenio.com

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