With the discovery of three bodies dumped at the side of the highway early Monday, August 26, the homicide rate in the Municipality of Jocotepec has taken a steep upward spike over the past month.
Police were led to the latest crime scene by a female motorist who reported witnessing large human-shaped forms covered in black plastic bags being tossed out of a moving vehicle in the vicinity of El Chante sometime between 6 and 7 a.m. Examination of bags revealed three male corpses killed by violent means.
According the Jose Luis Velazquez Pulido, regional head of the Ministerio Publico (MP) public prosecutors’ offices, the men died from strangulation. Two of them had their left arms hacked off. He added that a written message left with the bodies was a warning reading “Greetings to all the thieves who keep stealing here in the Ribera.”At press time one of the men had still not been identified. The other two, were officially recognized by close relatives as Eliseo Gudiño Sanchez, 25 and Jairo Margarito Loza Barragan, 35, both residents of Jocotepec.
Two other men, showing signs of being murdered in a similar fashion, were found at the waterfront of San Juan Cosala just after dawn on August. 11. They were eventually identified at Noe Guerrero Cortes, 21 and Cesar Israel Evangelista Gomez, 28, both with domicile in Zapopan.
The MP official told the Reporter he had no knowledge of the alleged August 8 shooting death of a man at one of the seafood restaurants located on the lakefront strip at Piedra Barrenada, as circulated on the local grapevine.
However on the evening of August 16, a decomposed body with a gunshot wound in the skull was found on a dirt road leading to El Aguacate, a backwater village located within Jocotepec’s boundaries, close to the dividing line with Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos. The dead man’s identity remains unknown.