MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two Australians and an American were doing what they loved most on the stunning and isolated coast of the state of Baja California, in northwestern Mexico.
Their latest images on social media showed them sitting watching the waves crash against the rocks.
Initial investigations suggest that what ended their lives was the result of a fortuitous event such as the passing of a van full of malicious people.
The surfers were shot in the head and their bodies were dumped in a covered pit several kilometers away. The development of events was nightmarish.
According to the preliminary hypothesis, brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, from Australia, and American Jack Carter Rhoad had made a surfing stop at Punta San José, about 80 kilometers south of Ensenada. There they were attacked on April 28 or 29.
As soon as the police arrived at their last known campsite it was clear that something had gone wrong.
There were blood stains and drag marks “like heavy packages,” which raised suspicions of an attack, according to Baja California state prosecutor María Elena Andrade Ramírez, in an attempt to reconstruct the scene.
Andrade Ramírez said at a press conference on Sunday that investigators presume that the murderers passed by the place and when they saw the foreigners’ truck they wanted to steal the tires and other parts. “It was not an attack in their capacity as tourists… Surely they did not know the nationality of the victims,” he added.
The prosecutor explained that, according to the evaluations of forensic specialists, the foreigners would have resisted and “the assailants took out a gun and first killed the one who was resisting the theft of the vehicle and then the other two arrived and joined the fight. to defend his property and his companion who had been attacked and they also killed them.
The reconstruction of the events was based on reports from expert services that indicated that the three foreigners had gunshot wounds to the head.
There was a hasty attempt to destroy evidence. Evidence collected by authorities shows that the attackers burned the foreigners’ tents and their truck was driven kilometers away and burned. The alleged assailants’ vehicle was later found with a gun inside.
Then, in “an area that was difficult to access”, the bodies were thrown into a well located about six kilometers away. Investigators were surprised when a fourth body that had been there much longer was found beneath the bodies of the three foreigners.
The well had been covered with boards. “It was literally almost impossible to find it,” Andrade Ramírez said. It took two hours to remove the bodies.
Prosecutors have said they were questioning three people over the murders. Two of them were caught with methamphetamines. One of them, a woman, had the mobile phone of one of the victims when she was arrested. Prosecutors said the two were being held pending drug charges, but remain suspects in the murders.
A third man was arrested on charges of a crime equivalent to kidnapping, but that was before the bodies were found. It was unclear whether he could face more charges.
According to initial investigations, the third man directly participated in the murders. Due to limitations of Mexican laws, prosecutors identified the detainee as Jesús Gerardo “N”, alias “el Kekas”, a word that in local slang means quesadillas or cheese tortillas.
Andrade Ramírez said he had a criminal record that included drug trafficking, vehicle theft and domestic violence and added that they do not rule out that other people are involved.
He stressed that he could not talk about anything related to the suspects, nor their possible statements, because that was not allowed by Mexican law and could harm the case against them.
Andrade Ramírez pointed out that the victims’ relatives indicated that the brothers and Carter Rhoad had gone to the coastal location many times and had never had any problems. This time, however, “there was no way to ask for help in the presence of his attackers.”
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2024-05-08 18:43:58
