Jessy Pacheco, a U.S. medical student who was reported missing following a shooting incident in Guadalajara, has been reunited with his family in Van Buren, Arkansas.
The investigation had scarcely begun when Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro announced that Pacheco was “safe and sound” in the United States.
Authorities believed Pacheco was abducted after his friend and fellow student Carlos Delgadillo – also a U.S.citizen – was shot to death outside a nightclub in Colonia Providencia in the early hours of Sunday, June 15.
Both students studied at the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara (UAG) medical program and were celebrating their graduation with others from their course.
Officials from the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalia) seemed surprised when Pacheco turned up in Dallas, Texas several days after his reported abduction.
Back in his home town of Van Buren, the burly 29-year-old spoke briefly to reporters outside a church. He said he couldn’t recall anything about the abduction and that it was all “a complete blackout.” He said he hadn’t spoken with Mexican law enforcement officials.
Although reluctant to provide any details of how he was released and managed to get back home, Pacheco acknowledged that he had thought his “life was over.”
Speaking about Delgadillo, Pacheco said: ““Carlos was a close friend of mine and I’m sorry it happened to him. I would have taken his place. He didn’t deserve it.”
According to sources in Van Buren, Pacheco was raised by a single mother, a Salvadoran immigrant who has worked for years in a chicken processing plant. Her other son, who was not born in the United States, is reportedly intelligent and speaks perfect English, but has been deported because he is not a U.S. citizen.