The Mexican Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Monday the arrest of three people allegedly linked to the killing of the Langford-LeBarón family, which occurred in the north of the country on November 4. The authorities have so far accumulated seven detainees for the murder of three women and six children. On December 26, the suspects announced today were captured. They are joined by the arrest of one more man in November and three others on December 2. Among the new detainees is the Director of Public Security of a municipality in the region, in the north of the country.
Mexico has seen its most violent year pass this 2019. Among the more than 30,000 homicides with which it will close, the case of the Langford-LeBarón impacted by its brutality. The attack happened on the morning of November 4 in one of the main Mormon communities in the northern state of Sonora. The women traveled with 14 children in two vans to Chihuahua, the neighboring entity, when they were allegedly intercepted by a group of armed civilians. The criminals set fire to one of the vehicles, burning one of the adults and four children, and opened fire on the other, shooting two women and two more children with bullets.
Almost two months after the massacre and with all the political and media pressure on it, the Prosecutor’s Office shows signs of progress in the investigation. Of the seven arrests, six occurred in December. The most striking arrest so far has been that of Fidel Villegas, the director of Public Security of Janos, a municipality located in the State of Chihuahua, a few kilometers from the scene of the killing.
Both Villegas and the other two detainees on December 26 were designated by the authorities for being part of La Línea, a criminal group associated with the Juarez cartel, with a presence there. An announcement that tries to reinforce the theory of the Mexican Government, which he has attributed the facts to a confusion that occurred amid a confrontation between two cartels. Although Julián LeBarón, spokesman for the family, has rejected that idea, the authorities have clung to that theory that they must now justify in court.
The case will have to deal with a judicial system in which the arrests correspond half the time to the convictions, in part, because many arrests occur in response to social and media pressure. Statistics indicate that four out of 10 prisoners in Mexico have not received a sentence. Situations that have been reflected in iconic cases such as the murder of the son of activist Javier Sicilia in 2011, whose investigation took different people to prison at different times, but there was never a sentence.
The Mexican Prosecutor’s Office has the help of the FBI in the investigation of this case. The US agency got involved in the investigations after theto diplomatic tension that caused the killing between Mexico and the United States for the murder of family members with both nationalities. President Donald Trump offered his help in resolving the case, but the gesture became threatening days later when the US government announced that it would incorporate drug cartels into the list of terrorists. The escalation found a brake in early December by suspending Trump “temporarily” the measure.
The seven detainees are now in police custody after a judge linked them to trial and ordered arraigo, a kind of extendable preventive detention. In addition to the charges they face for the killing, the Prosecutor’s Office has announced that they are accused of “crimes against health,” the judicial category that includes drug trafficking crimes.
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