Minutes before 11pm this Monday, Sergio Avilés Demeneghi, President of the Quintana Roo Electoral Court, parked in front of the door of his home north of Chetumal. Surveillance cameras recorded him getting out of the car and a van pulled up in front of him. Noticing two men approaching him, the judge ran. They gave chase and stopped him and put him in his vehicle while a second car watched and escorted him. A senior Mexican official was kidnapped in just 70 seconds. The Quintana Roo Minister for Public Safety confirmed they released him two hours later with “a few beatings which did not endanger his life”.
The images from the surveillance cameras allow us to reconstruct the last minutes of the president of the electoral tribunal before his kidnapping. Avilés, 42, parked at 10:50 p.m. on Tecnológico de Veracruz street in Chetumal. He takes a shirt from the back of the vehicle and goes to the passenger side. He’s there when he turns to the truck and sees two gunmen get out. Shirt still in hand, the judge begins to run. One of the subjects shoots and Avilés falls to the ground. The truck reverses to where the senior officer is lying. From there they stowed it in the vehicle.
A few seconds later, a second car appears, from which another person gets out to steal some belongings from the President of the Electoral Court’s truck. It is not clear from the pictures what is transported. He quickly returns to the vehicle and both cars line up to exit where Avilés’ vehicle stops with its doors open.
Quintana Roo’s Minister for Citizen Security has reported that he received a 911 call at midnight over a case of illegal deprivation. “The Coordinating Group for Building Peace and Security in Quintana Roo, consisting of the Minister for Citizen Security, the Secretary of Defense, the Navy, the National Guard and the Attorney General, has applied the search and rescue protocols. Two hours later, the person returned home on his own, suffered some non-life-threatening beatings and is being examined by medical staff,” the agency said in a statement. Prosecutors did not say whether they have already been identified for the crime.
The kidnapping of Sergio Avilés has become a new example of the insecurity plaguing Quintana Roo. Just two months ago, the shipping company Cipriano Torres was kidnapped in the state capital Chetumal using the same method. Quintana Roo was the state with the highest incidence of this crime in May, according to the latest report by Stop kidnapping, which recorded 80 kidnappings nationwide last month, killing 296 people. Official figures from the executive secretary for public security include 34 kidnappings and six kidnappings in May, more than 200 in 2023 between the two crimes.
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