Mexican President André Manuel López Obrador has promised that a group of soldiers caught on camera “executing” five suspected members of a criminal organization will be prosecuted.
Shocking May 18 video showed the victims’ black pickup truck crashing into the wall of a store at high speed in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across from Laredo, Texas. The military truck pursuing him then crashed into the right side of the truck near the passenger door.
The men were forced out of the pickup truck, beaten, dragged across the dirt-covered ground, forced to kneel facing the wall, and later shot before the soldiers attempted to cover up the scene.
“Apparently this was an execution and that cannot be allowed,” López Obrador said Wednesday during his daily morning briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City. “Those responsible will soon be handed over to the responsible authorities.”
The victims were identified as José Ángel, 27; Jose Antonio, 32; Edgar Chavarria, 38; Jose Isabel, 23; and Clinton Alex, 25. The government did not release their last names.
Mexican soldiers aim their guns as they approach the pickup truck carrying five suspected members of the Northeast Cartel on the afternoon of May 18. The suspects, all men, were dragged from the vehicle, beaten and forced to kneel facing the wall before being shot
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday that the soldiers involved in the killing of five suspected drug dealers will be prosecuted
Several shootings and roadblocks were reported to authorities on the day of the incident that preceded the massacre, although no injuries or deaths were recorded. Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Cantún took to social media to advise residents to take shelter in their homes and workplaces until authorities had a better overview of the reported events.
According to Mexican newspaper Proceso, Lieutenant José Nava filed an incident report with the Ministry of Defense and found that his infantry had been fired upon by alleged members of the Cártel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel) while his troops inspected a pickup truck carrying the five victims. During the search, Nava said the suspects tried to retrieve their weapons and were killed in crossfire.
At 1:36 p.m., the pickup truck transporting the suspected drug dealers was spotted on surveillance camera driving across the median and nearly collided head-on with two vehicles before crashing into the wall of the building.
A minute later, the soldiers arrive and pull the five men out of their vehicle. Two minutes passed when one of the soldiers removed a .50 caliber Barrett semi-automatic rifle, the same one used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in the botched assassination attempt on Omar García, Mexico City’s security chief, in June 2020.
The cartel members are then dragged out of their vehicle.
A soldier, believed to be the one responsible, can be seen directing soldiers to line up the suspects and have them kneel facing the wall.
A black pickup truck carrying five suspected members of the Northeast Cartel crashes directly into the wall of a store in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, May 18 after being chased by the military
Soldiers drag one of the five suspected cartel suspects they killed May 18 after their pickup truck crashed into a wall
A Mexican soldier points his gun at one of the five cartel suspects who were executed on May 18
At 2:41 p.m., the military truck leaves the scene and the soldier, yelling instructions, tells his men where to stand before the truck returns. He then gets into the abandoned truck while the soldiers stay behind and start beating the suspects.
The troops then positioned themselves next to the pickup when one of them fired two shots into the ground near where the suspects were detained.
They then open fire, but their apparent attackers are nowhere to be seen. Later, the soldiers approach the suspects and point their guns at them.
After shooting the five men, the soldiers are seen placing their guns next to their bodies. Four of the suspects were pronounced dead at the scene and a fifth died while being transported to a local hospital. He had three gunshot wounds.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies the border, said the soldiers appeared to have attempted to alter the crime scene to make it appear as if there had been an armed altercation.
“It seems that the intention was to leave these bodies armed, to give the impression of a confrontation between armed groups of civilians, as has happened before,” Correa-Cabrera said.
The killings seem to challenge López Obrador’s strategy of relying almost exclusively on the military for law enforcement.
“It is clear that the armed forces were involved in the security of this city and that this city was never made safe,” she said. “As long as we have soldiers doing (law enforcement) duties on the streets, that will continue to happen.”
The incident would be at least the second instance of apparent extrajudicial killings in Nuevo Laredo this year.
On February 26, soldiers killed five young men who were in a vehicle.
The men appeared to be unarmed, and in a report, Mexico’s state human rights agency said the soldiers fired at the vehicle without verbally ordering it to stop. Angry neighbors attacked the soldiers and beat some of them.
In April, federal prosecutors indicted four soldiers involved in murder.