The Michoacán Prosecutor’s Office announced Thursday the identification of the body of the alleged murderer of Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez, former municipal president of Uruapan. According to the owner, Carlos Torres Piña, Víctor Manuel Ubaldo Vidales, 17, from the nearby municipality of Paracho, is linked to organized crime. His body was recognized and claimed by his relatives this Wednesday afternoon. The attacker’s family acknowledged that he had been absent from home a week before the events.
Torres Piña announced that Víctor Manuel N. tested positive for sodium rhodizonate, a chemical compound that, together with other acids, is used in a forensic test to detect the presence of lead and barium residues, which confirms that he was the one who shot the mayor on at least six occasions. From the same analyses, according to the prosecutor, it emerged that the young man was addicted to metphentamine, information confirmed by his relatives.
In the midst of the Day of the Dead celebration, with the city square packed, Manzo was shot on Saturday evening and died a few minutes later. Ubaldo Vidales was killed immediately after shooting at the municipality and two other comrades were arrested on the spot, according to authorities. The 17-year-old was related to the Jalisco New Generation cartel. The attack, according to sources close to the investigation, was ordered by this criminal organization, which was attacked in August by the mayor, when the local police captured its leader, René Belmonte, alias Rhinoceros.
“The progress of the investigation has allowed us to determine that more than two people participated in these events and that the murder is linked to organized crime groups,” Torres Piña said at a press conference.
The situation in Uruapan, one of the most important municipalities in Michoacán, which has 350,000 inhabitants and is the hub of the avocado agricultural industry in the region, has worsened in recent months. A source connected to the case claims that El Rino was the one who led the CJNG’s extortion plan in the area, directed mainly against small and medium-sized farmers, who could not afford safety and security equipment, unlike large producers in the area.
Manzo is the seventh mayor of the country murdered this year and the third of Michoacán, which is experiencing a fateful month. On the same day that the municipal president of Uruapan was killed, the nephew of former state self-defense forces leader Hipólito Mora, Alejandro Torres Mora, and his wife were killed in his home, and a few weeks earlier lemon producer Bernardo Bravo fell.
(News in development. More information will be available soon)
