119 gunshots, 13 soldiers involved and two dead girls. This is the result of the attack carried out by a group of men in uniform in May against a family’s truck in Badiraguato, in the mountains of Sinaloa, in north-west Mexico. The details of the investigations to which EL PAÍS had access shed light on this event – an apparent confusion by the soldiers – to which Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has barely referred in recent months. The attack, which injured two other minors and two adults, revives the ghosts of the Army’s trigger-happy attitude, considering the military deployment in the country in recent years as part of the strategy of successive governments in the fight against organized crime.
Just this week, Secretary of National Defense Ricardo Trevilla touched on the issue in passing when questioned at the president’s morning press conference. “Inquiry files have been opened at the General Prosecutor’s Office (FGR) and at the Military Prosecutor’s Office. In the case of the soldiers, the judge ordered the imprisonment of six elements. As for the civil case, the FGR is following the murder case. This is the situation,” the army chief said. Although military justice had originally sent 12 of the 13 involved to prison, as this newspaper learned, for a crime of disobedience, six left the center months later, judging by Trevilla’s statements. The number 13 involved was never arrested. The reason is unknown.
This newspaper contacted the spokesperson of the Ministry of Defense to inquire about the latter and understand why half of the 12 remain in prison and the others were released, without receiving a response. Likewise, this newspaper contacted the FGR spokesperson to find out what is happening in the civil investigation and received no response. The soldiers involved were part of the 42nd Infantry Battalion, based in Guamúchil, a little north of Badiraguato. The events occurred after 2.30 pm. on May 6, on a street outside the municipal headquarters. Badiraguato is one of the largest municipalities in the state, with dozens of communities and rancherías. The attack came amid the battle between factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which began in September 2024 and still continues.
The case struck the press as the terrible consequence of a clash between soldiers and armed civilians, a version promoted by the authorities. According to this story, the family’s truck would have been caught in the crossfire and the bullets would have hit two of the minors who were in the bed of the vehicle, Leidy, 11, and Alexa, 7. As the hours passed, the relatives of the girls and the rest of the victims rejected this version and stressed that the soldiers had fired without any aggression. From the statements of some of them, then made before the military or civil prosecutor’s office, it appears that they heard shots coming from the “hill” or from “a hill located on the left side of the road”. Only one said he heard shots from the side where the truck passed.
At least 13 soldiers of the 24 who were part of the convoy, made up of three vehicles, admitted to shooting. Of the 13, two were in the first vehicle, seven in the second and four in the third. The lieutenant in command of the convoy stated that he had not heard any shots before those fired by his men, and that he had ordered them to stop as soon as possible. The count of bullets carried by the people involved, before and after leaving the base, allows us to conclude that the soldiers fired 119 times. Of those 119 bullets, the family’s truck, a black GMC Sierra, with its top open, received 38, mostly in the body and windows.
This case is not unique to the Sheinbaum government. In October, soldiers shot and killed six people in Tamaulipas, apparently day laborers working in the region’s agricultural fields. A year earlier, in Chiapas, the military had also killed six migrants due to an alleged confusion. In both cases, even in Badiraguato, the reaction of the Executive was similar. Sheinbaum regretted what happened, promised an investigation and recalled that the Army does not act as it has acted in the past, referring to the years of presidents Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), when events like this were more common.
But situations like that of Badiraguato reveal some discrepancies between the president’s words and the military’s actions. First of all for the narrative. In the first hours after the incident, the authorities tried to spread the idea in the media that the family had been caught in the crossfire, shifting responsibility outside the confines of the Army. Only the relatives’ statements shed light on the incident, allowing the official version to be debunked. And then for military protocols. The Badiraguato soldiers fired more than 100 shots at a truck, in which there were four minors on board an open boat, in broad daylight.
