Seven police officers are arrested in suspicion over the disappearances of three people in Mexico. The local police in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz are being investigated as regarding the said disappearances, which were reportedly missing last week.
According to Daily Mail, the local police officers of the municipality of Papantla in the state of Veracruz were in custody, including the chief of the local police, Veracruz state prosecutor Luis Angel Bravo Contreras said on a news conference on Monday.
On the initial statement released by the Veracruz state public security agency, the state and federal forces worked together for the arrests. The probe is about the disappearances of three people, who were all reportedly last seen on 19th of March, being taken into police vehicles. The disappearances involving police officers is the second case in Veracruz this year.
The arrests come nine days after the three male youths went missing. Mexico News Daily reported, Blanca Ninfa Cruz, the mother of Alberto Uriel Pérez Cruz, 18, and Luis Alberto Morales Cruz, 19 left their house in the morning Saturday on 19th of March to visit his former girlfriend.
The girlfriend notices that the two were being tailed by a police patrol vehicles, on which they tried to escape. However, the police began to shoot Pérez Cruz' vehicle's tires. The girlfriend stated that the two were eventually captured and taken by the police. Similar case was also reported to Jesús Alán Ticante, 24, who was on his way to visit his grandmother but he never arrived.
The disappearances have been reported in the town of Papantla, which is an indigenous town of Totonaca Indians in the Mexican Gulf coast state, located in the northern part of Veracruz, according to Fox News Latino. Relatives of the missing three accused municipal police in that town of arresting them and making them disappear.
Five youths disappeared after being detained by state police in January. The case is similar to the five young people who went missing after being arrested in January in the Veracruz town of Tierra Blanca. They were allegedly killed by state police officers and members of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion drug cartel. The remains of two were recovered.
As part of its investigation, the state AG's office has requested video footage from traffic cameras and is conducting forensic tests on one of the patrol vehicles.
