According to the Michoacán Prosecutor’s Office, Mexican authorities arrested seven bodyguards who accompanied the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, on the night of his murder on November 1. The agency was investigating security personnel who accompanied the municipal president to the Day of the Dead celebrations for shooting Víctor Manuel Ubaldo, the teenager who pulled the trigger, when he was already immobilized. The Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, had already reported that the suspects were municipal police officers who acted as Manzo’s bodyguards that night.
The Prosecutor’s Office has not yet specified who the detainees are. However, in a statement they specified that an arrest warrant had been served against seven public employees of the municipality of Uruapan. Arrest warrants were issued against the seven for “murder qualified by failure to act as guarantor”, according to sources close to the investigation, consulted by EL PAÍS. The companions will be transferred to the Lic. David Franco Rodríguez Penitentiary Center, in Morelia.
Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, governor of the state of Michoacán, also confirmed the investigation into the mayor’s bodyguards for opening fire on the assassin when he no longer posed a threat. “They arrest the murderer and a few moments later there is a struggle and there is a single shot that kills the murderer,” he told the media at a press conference. “The fields of investigation are open in every sense,” he added.
One of the bodyguards who testified after the murder confessed to having shot Víctor Ubaldo. The teenager, dressed in a white sweatshirt, managed to make his way through the crowd who had attended the Candle Festival in Uruapan’s central square. With a 9 mm pistol he shot the mayor several times. That night Manzo was protected by a group of municipal police officers who formed his first security circle. One of them shot the teenager when he was already immobilized and neutralized. “They are not detained, but they are being located and will testify whenever they are called,” Harfuch said Nov. 11 at a news conference.
Ubaldo’s murder, in the chaos caused by the attack, significantly delayed the investigation, as it was not possible to identify the killer for several days. The authorities did not know his age or name and could not link him to the other perpetrators of the crime. The Prosecutor’s Office had to release photos of his tattoos to trace his identity. Finally, it was ascertained that the young man was 17 years old and originally from the nearby municipality of Paracho. Relatives recognized the body and declared that Ubaldo had not returned home for a week before the murder. Having discovered the name of the murderer, the investigations managed to find the two companions who accompanied him that night, Fernando Josué ‘N’ and Ramiro ‘N’. Although both managed to escape and were ordered into hiding, they were found dead on a road days later. Harfuch stressed that the murder of the two collaborators indicates that the criminal group to which they belong silenced them so that investigators could not continue to advance and end up linking them to the intellectual authors.
