The presumed bodies of two Australian surfers and an American, missing in Mexico, were found with a bullet in the head in a seaside resort in the country, Mexican prosecutors said on Sunday.
“They all have a hole in their head produced by a firearm projectile,” state Attorney General Maria Elena Andrade said Sunday.
The families of the victims arrived in Mexico on Saturday to formally identify the bodies, she said during a press conference.
One of the favorite leads followed by investigators is that of an attempted theft of the tourists’ pick-up which apparently went wrong.
Missing for a week
The vehicle was found burned not far from the bodies of the two Australian brothers, Jake and Callum Robinson, and the American Jack Carter, surfing enthusiasts. They were last seen on April 27 in Bocana de Santo Tomas, a resort town in the municipality of Ensenada.
Three suspects, including a woman who had a photo of the boys on her cell phone, were arrested last Thursday for their possible direct or indirect participation in the affair, according to Mexican justice, which provided no convincing evidence.
A state of criminal cartels
On Saturday, prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade told journalists that the bodies were in an “advanced state of decomposition”, which complicated their complete identification. “However, based on their clothing and certain characteristics such as long hair and specific physical descriptions, the probability is high,” she said, when asked about the possibility that these were the three missing foreigners. Another body was discovered in the same place, but analyzes showed that it had been there for a longer time.
Journalists deployed to the area saw rescue teams and forensic experts extract what appeared to be mud-covered corpses from a well in a cliff at the top using a pulley system. above the Pacific.
The famous beaches of Baja California are frequented by many American vacationers, who take advantage of the proximity to the border with the United States. But this state is also one of the most violent in Mexico due to the presence of drug trafficking cartels. In November 2015, two Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, were killed in the state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico. And in March 2023, suspected members of the Gulf Cartel kidnapped four Americans in the city of Matamoros, on the American border. Two of them were killed.
The wave of violence that has engulfed Mexico since the federal government launched a controversial anti-drug operation at the end of 2006 has left more than 450,000 dead and 100,000 missing.