MEXICO CITY — Kidnappers grabbed a 5-year-old boy from a gritty Mexico City street market, then killed him by injecting acid into his heart.
Javier Morena was the oldest son of a poor family that sold fruit at a market in Iztapalapa, proof that the recent plague of kidnappings for ransom afflicts the working class as well as the wealthy.
Javier disappeared while playing at the market on Oct. 26, Mexico City authorities said Monday. The boy’s family spent days looking for him, finally persuading a local television station to post his picture on the news Wednesday.
A taxi driver recognized the boy and went to the market to find the family. He told them that he had given the boy and a teenager a ride from the market to nearby Mexico state.
The family showed the driver a picture of their son, which happened to include a 17-year-old family friend. The driver confirmed that the teen in the picture was the one who was with the boy.
Police raided the teen’s home. He, his family and two others confessed to killing the boy before they could demand a ransom of 300,000 pesos ($23,000), Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Mancera said in a statement. Mancera said the assailants injected the boy with acid and buried him on a hill outside the capital.
Five suspected kidnappers, including the 17-year-old, are under arrest. It wasn’t clear whether the group had carried out other kidnappings.
Mexico has one of the world’s highest kidnapping rates, according to the anti-violence group IKV Pax Christi.
