2024-05-05 21:21:02
One of the things investigators are following is an attempt to steal a tourist pick-up, which apparently went wrong.
Jorge Duenes / REUTERS
The presumed bodies of two Australian and American surfers, missing in Mexico, were found with a bullet in the head, Mexican prosecutors announced Sunday, with their families on the scene to identify them. “They all have a hole in one produced by a cannonball”said prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade.
The families of the victims came to Mexico on Saturday to formally identify the bodies, she said during a press conference. One of the favorite things for investigators to follow is an attempt to steal a tourist pick-up, which apparently went wrong.
The burned vehicle was found not far from the bodies of the two Australian brothers, Jake and Callum Robinson, and the American Jack Carter, surfing enthusiasts. They were last seen on April 27 in Bocana de Santo Tomas, a resort town in the municipality of Ensenada.
According to media reports from Australia, Jake Robinson, 30 years old, was a doctor in the city of Perth in Australia. His brother Callum was 33 and their American friend Jack Carter 30. Three suspects, including a woman, were arrested last Thursday for their direct or indirect involvement in the business, according to Mexican justice.
The situation of criminal cartels
On Saturday, the prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade told journalists that the bodies were ia “high state of decomposition”which complicates their full identification. “However, based on their clothing and certain characteristics such as long hair and a particular physical description, the probability is high”she declared, when asked about the possibility that these were the three missing foreigners.
Journalists saw rescue teams deployed to the area and forensic experts remove bodies apparently covered in mud from a cliff-top well using a pulley system over the Pacific Ocean. Another body was found in the same place, but analysis showed that it had been there for a while longer and had nothing to do with the three missing surfers.
The Australian mother of two, Debra Robinson, said on Facebook on Saturday that they never arrived at the accommodation they had booked. Callum Robinson’s Instagram account posts various bits from the trio’s trip to Mexico where they can be seen enjoying a beer with their feet up in a bar, sitting in a Jacuzzi, eating tacos on the side of the road, watching the waves .
The US Federal Police office in San Diego, southwest California, announced that Saturday “three deceased” was found in Santo Tomas, in the Mexican state of Baja California, about 45 kilometers southeast of Ensenada. The famous beaches of Baja California often vacation many Americans, who take advantage of its proximity to the border with the United States.
But this state is also one of the most violent in Mexico due to the presence of drug trafficking cartels. In November 2015, two Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, were killed in the state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico. And in March 2023, suspected members of the Gulf Cartel kidnapped four Americans in the city of Matamoros, on the American border. Two of them were killed. The wave of violence that has engulfed Mexico since the federal government launched a controversial anti-drug operation in late 2006 has left more than 450,000 dead and 100,000 missing.
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