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8 bodies found dumped in Mexican resort of Cancun as authorities search for missing people
Authorities in the Mexican resort of Cancun said Tuesday they are trying to identify eight bodies found dumped in the Caribbean resort.
Speaking to families of missing people, Oscar Montes de Oca, the head prosecutor of the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo pledged to carry out more searches and identifications.
The bodies were found in searches over the weekend in which police looked in wooded lots and even sinkhole ponds known as cenotes.
After the bodies were found, state authorities issued a statement on Facebook, urging people “not to publish and share on social networks false news that only damages the image of Quintana Roo.”
More than 112,000 people are listed as missing in Mexico, and searches for clandestine grave sites have become common throughout the country. What is unusual is that they are now being carried out in Cancun, the crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry.
PAOLA CHIOMANTE / REUTERS
The clandestine body dumping grounds are often used by drug cartels to dispose of bodies of their victims. Several cartels are fighting for control of the Caribbean coast and its lucrative retail drug trade. The lack of help from officials has left many family members to take up search efforts for their missing loved ones themselves, often forming volunteer search teams known as “colectivos.”
Montes de Oca said five of the bodies were found at a building site that had apparently been abandoned. The bodies had been dumped there between one week and two months ago; three have been identified as people reported missing previously.
At another site in a wooded area on the outskirts of Cancun, authorities found three sets of skeletal remains. They have not yet been identified.
The bodies were found in a poor neighborhood about 10 miles from Cancun’s beach and hotel zone, but relatively closer to the resort’s airport.
Similar searches were also carried out in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, a town south of Tulum.
Volunteer searchers, including the relatives of missing people, and specially trained dogs also participated with investigators in the searches.
Feuding drug gangs have caused violence in Cancun and the resort-studded Caribbean coast south of it.
Earlier this month, four men in Cancun were killed in a dispute related to drug gang rivalries. The dead men were found in the city’s hotel zone near the beach.
A U.S. tourist was shot in the leg in the nearby town of Puerto Morelos in March. The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert that month warning travelers to “exercise increased caution,” especially after dark, at resorts like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
That warning came in the wake of the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico earlier this month. The State Department posted a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for Tamaulipas, the Mexican state the Americans were in when they were kidnapped.
In June 2022, two Canadians were killed in Playa del Carmen, apparently because of debts between international drug and weapons trafficking gangs. Last January, two other Canadians were killed and one injured in a shooting at a resort near Cancun.
In March 2022, a British resident of Playa del Carmen was shot and killed in broad daylight while traveling with his daughter in his car.
In October 2021, farther south in the laid-back destination of Tulum, two tourists – one a California travel blogger born in India and the other German – were killed when they apparently were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival drug dealers.
The following month, two suspected drug dealers were killed in a shooting that sent tourists in swimsuits fleeing in panic from a beach near Cancun.
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Charges against Georgia high school shooter’s dad echo precedent set in historic Crumbley case
(CBS DETROIT) – The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing two students and two teachers at a Georgia high school was charged in connection with the shooting. His charges follow in the wake of the convictions of two Michigan parents after a school shooting carried out by their child.
Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, in the shooting that happened at Apalachee High School Wednesday morning. The 14-year-old suspect was charged with four counts of felony murder.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said the charges come from Colin Gray “knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon.” The father was in court Friday morning, where a judge told him he could face up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
The father of the shooting suspect being charged comes after the historic case of James and Jennifer Crumbley, who were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, becoming the first parents in the U.S. to be convicted in a mass school shooting carried out by their child.
James and Jennifer Crumbley were held responsible for their roles in the Oxford High School shooting that killed four students — Justin Shilling, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre and Hana St. Juliana — and injured seven other people on Nov. 30, 2021.
During their trials, the prosecution argued that the Crumbley parents ignored their son’s mental health needs and purchased the gun that he used in the shooting.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, the prosecutor in the Crumbley case who set the precedent for prosecuting parents in mass school shootings, reacted to the news that the Georgia suspect’s father was charged in an interview with CNN Thursday.
“My reaction is rage because you know it the prosecution of the Crumbleys was never, ever meant to be a floodgate of charges against parents, because it was such an egregious set of facts,” said McDonald. “I share the emotions of the entire country that, even after that well-publicized case, we’re still here.”
Former federal prosecutor and defense attorney Rick Convertino, appearing on CBS News Detroit to discuss the shooting at Apalachee before it was revealed that the shooter’s father had been charged, noted the differences between the gun laws in Georgia and Michigan and claimed “gun culture” is different in Georgia than it is in Michigan. Georgia passed a law in 2022 that allowed residents to carry without a permit, which means adults do not need to have a permit to buy or carry buy rifles, shotguns or handguns.
One of the most significant differences, according to Convertino, is with the gun storage laws. “In Georgia, there’s no specific child-preventive act that requires the guns to be secured and safe from unrestricted children to have access to it,” said Convertino.
There is also no gun lock law in Georgia or any “red flag” laws that allow for the removal of guns from someone who is determined to be a risk for harming themselves or other people. Georgia’s laws are among the least strict in the nation, according to a CBS News analysis.
“We’ve seen this 14-year-old shooter had made threats a year before. The father apparently said to the police that he bought the AR-style weapon for a Christmas present for his minor child,” Kris Brown, president of gun control advocacy organization Brady, told CBS News’ Natalie Brand, drawing a parallel to the Crumbley case.
Brown said Colin Gray’s arrest and the convictions of James and Jennifer Crumbley send a message.
“If you have a firearm in the home, you better safely store that firearm, or you will have a risk if something happens of being criminally charged,” she said.
Michigan’s new gun safety laws went into effect in February, a little over two years after the Oxford High School shooting.
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