Viral messages being circulated on WhatsApp saying that gangs are abducting children from Guadalajara shopping malls are totally false, the State Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalia) stressed this week.
In a post on its Facebook page, the Fiscalia de Jalisco urged citizens who receive these posts to refrain from resending them to other acquaintances, which, they note, “only causes panic.”
The Guadalajara and Zapopan municipal police departments denied they have received any reports about abductions of children in recent weeks.
One of the messages said an armed man was seen grabbing a small child from his father and running off with the infant in Zapopan’s upmarket Andares mall. The mall denied the incident took place.
Reports of children being abducted by gangs, supposedly for their body parts, have circulated in Mexico for many years but none nave been fully substantiated.