Mexico City – Mexico City authorities investigating the apparent kidnapping of a professional soccer coach will stay on the margins of the case in deference to relatives of Cruz Azul coach Ruben Omar Romano, the capital city’s top prosecutor said Wednesday.
The 47-year-old Argentine coach was forced from his gray BMW by five armed assailants and taken away Tuesday afternoon outside a practice facility in southern Mexico City.
But family members and the soccer club have not filed a police report.
People in Mexico are often reluctant to report kidnappings to police, out of fear that corrupt officers may be involved in the abductions or that authorities might kill the victim along with the kidnappers in any rescue effort.
Mexico City Attorney General Bernardo Batiz said that while a kidnapping investigation had been launched, his office would stay “on the margins” of the case because family members and the Cruz Azul soccer club, where Romano worked, had not reported the crime.
Batiz said two vehicles used in the abduction and found abandoned a short distance away had been stolen the previous day.
Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said city officials would “do all that we can on our part to clear up the situation and above all to achieve the safe rescue of the coach of Cruz Azul.”
The mayor, who is campaigning for president ahead of the 2006 elections, also expressed concern that the abduction would hurt the city’s reputation. “Any act of violence against any citizen is lamentable, but much more so when it deals with a well-known person, because this implies discredit for Mexico City,” Lopez Obrador said. Romano’s abduction comes after a series of deadly kidnappings this year, most in the Mexico City urban area, said Jose Antonio Ortega, who leads a national public safety watchdog group.
