A Mexican official said Friday that there is no evidence that the three youths lynched by a mob outside Mexico City had intended to kidnap anyone.
As I wrote in a post a week ago, the three were killed a week ago by a mob of folks who believed they’d kidnapped, or intended to kidnap. But officials say the mob was mistaken. Moreover, none of the three — two of whom were 16 years old — have even any criminal record.Two were construction workers; the third a helper in a stationery store.
Authorities have arrested 23 people in connection with the lynching.
Lynching, as I mentioned in the earlier post, have long been part of life in Mexico, the expression of poor and working class communities’ outrage at criminals going unpunished. Sometimes, as it appears was the case here, their anger victimizes innocent people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. In my first book, I wrote about just such a lynching.
