Outrage grows over the police killing of woman in Mexico
MEXICO CITY — Outrage grew in Mexico and El Salvador as Mexican authorities said Monday that an autopsy of a Salvadoran woman who died in police custody confirmed that police broke her neck.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador flatly said that Victoria Esperanza Salazar was murdered by police in the Caribbean resort of Tulum.
Victoria Esperanza Salazar let out a scream Saturday afternoon as a female police officer knelt on her back to cuff her hands behind her. Salazar was face down on the street and barefoot. Her feet flailed. Several people passed slowly by on a bicycle. There were food stands a few yards away.
Clips of video cobbled together give no sense of how much time elapsed. Then three other officers are seen standing around her motionless body still face down, chatting casually. Later, three officers lift her handcuffed body into the back of a police pickup and drive away.
Video circulating on social media does not show events before Salazar was face down on the street with the officer on top of her.
An autopsy concluded that Salazar died from a broken neck. The examination found, “a fracture of part of the upper spinal column produced by the rupture of the first and second vertebra, which caused the loss of the victim,” Oscar Montes de Oca, state prosecutor of Quintana Roo, said in a video.
The injuries were “compatible and coincide with submission maneuvers applied to the victim during her detention” and demonstrate a “disproportionate” use of force. He said his office was preparing femicide charges against the four police officers.
Salazar had been living in Mexico for some years on a “humanitarian visa,” El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said. “She was brutally murdered by Tulum police officers in Quintana Roo, Mexico,” the president wrote. He said the government would support Salazar’s two daughters.
“I see thousands of outraged Mexicans, demanding justice for our compatriot,” Bukele said. “They are as outraged as we are. Let us not forget that it was not the Mexican people who committed this crime, but rather some criminals in the Tulum police.”
Lopez Obrador swore Monday that those responsible would be punished.
“She was brutally treated and murdered,” Lopez Obrador said. “It is an event that fills us with pain and shame.”
Protest marches were scheduled for later Monday in Tulum and Mexico City.
The scenes were reminiscent of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Following the autopsy results, Quintana Roo state security chief Lucio Hernandez Gutierrez said that in addition to the four police officers involved in the events, Tulum’s police chief was also fired Monday.
He called the video of the killing “shameful and conclusive.”