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The gunmen who killed 27 people in a drug rehabilitation center in Guanajuato last week were looking for someone, in particular, state prosecutors announced.
In a statement, the Guanajuato state prosecutor’s office said that three suspected gunmen were now in custody and allegedly belong to a criminal organization operating in the area, though the agency did not name the criminal group.
Although “El Marro,” the leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel released a recording where he says he had nothing to with the attack, his organization operates in an area known as Laja Bajío.
The three suspects arrested are also being investigated for other crimes.
The gunmen arrived at the rehabilitation center located in Irapuato and forced their way past women on the ground floor. Upstairs they burst into the room and forcing the male patients to lay face down on the floor. They asked if they knew where a certain person was and when the men answered no, the gunmen opened fire, the statement said. It did not identify the person being sought by the criminals.
The gunmen killed 21 men upstairs and three more they encountered on their way out downstairs. Three more who were wounded have since died of their injuries.
Guanajuato is the scene of a bloody turf war between the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and a local gang called the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Ever since the turf war started, the state became one of the most violent in Mexico.
The attack
On July 1, gunmen broke into a rehabilitation center in Guanajuato and opened fire, killing 27 people.
Irapuato’s Mayor Ricardo Ortiz Gutiérrez said the attack was due to the “drug war.”
After several texts were posted in social media in which the Jalisco New Generation Carte (CJNG) allegedly says it was responsible for the attack against alleged members of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, the mayor said the events were related to a clash between different drug gangs over the drug dealing market.
"Clearly, this was related to organized crime; it’s a confrontation between different gangs, cartels, that exist in the country and the región; of course, this is not the first time we see this situation due to the drug war.”
However, he did not mention a specific criminal group that could be involved in the attack.
The Mayor added that before the attack, the aggressors allowed women to leave the rehab center located at the Jardines de Arandas neighborhood and that others escaped.
He said there were seven aggressors involved in the attack and that they fled in two vans.
However, this is not the first shooting registered inside a rehab center. On June 6, gunmen killed 10 people at a center located in Irapuato.
No motive was given in the attack, but Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo said drug gangs were allegedly involved.
“I deeply regret and condemn the events in Irapuato this afternoon,” the governor wrote. “The violence generated by organized crime not only takes the lives of the young, but it takes peace from families in Guanajuato.”
Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level dealers from rival gangs sheltering at such facilities in the past.
Also, addicts and dealers who face attacks from rivals on the streets sometimes take refuge at the rehab clinics, making the clinics themselves targets for attack. Still, other gangs have been accused of forcibly recruiting recovering addicts at the centers as dealers, and killing them if they refused.
Mexico has long had problems with rehab centers because most are privately run, underfunded, and often commit abuses against recovering addicts. The government spends relatively little money on rehabilitation, often making the unregistered centers the only option available for poor families.
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