Leader of the gang that murdered Colombian students in Mexico arrested

State authorities arrested on Tuesday the leader of the gang accused of the murder of three medical students, two Colombians and one Mexican, along with an Uber driver that occurred last February in the central Mexican state of Puebla.

The officials reported that in compliance with an arrest warrant Felipe Hernández, alias “El Pirulí”, leader of the gang that allegedly murdered the four people, was detained on February 25.

The governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa, assured in a press conference that this arrest is “one of the most important that has been carried out in recent months”, because the law was applied and the corresponding responsibilities will be established in this case and others in which he participated. “With this arrest we captured all the murderers who participated in the kidnapping and qualified murder of the medical students and the driver,” added Barbosa.

The Puebla State Attorney General’s Office said that the capture occurred in the community of Santa Ana Xalmimulco, in the municipality of Huejotzingo, in compliance with the arrest warrant against him on charges of murder and kidnapping of the four people.

In a statement, the Prosecutor’s Office reported that the investigations indicate that Felipe Hernández would be the leader of the gang responsible for the homicides of the students. This in complicity with Pablo Jesús “N”, 46 years old; Ángel “N”, 23 years old and Lisset “N”, 22 years old, who were arrested hours after the events and are linked to the process for the crimes of homicide and theft of a vehicle, in addition to being in preventive detention.

On February 25 of this year, Mexican authorities found the bodies of the four people with traces of torture on a highway in central Mexico after attending the Huejotzingo carnival, in the state of Puebla.

Two of those killed were Colombian medical students and went by the names of Ximena Quijano Hernández, 25, and José Antonio Parada Cerpa, 22, who lived in the state of Puebla in central Mexico as part of an exchange student. The third student Francisco Javier Tirado, 22, was originally from the eastern state of Veracruz and was studying Medicine at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP). The fourth deceased is Josué Emanuel, 28, originally from Puebla and driver of a vehicle that provided Uber transportation service. The crimes generated, at that time, a wave of protests in the city of Puebla, capital of the state of the same name, and in Mexico City to demand justice for the three deceased students and safety for the young people.