Grecia Quiroz, mayor of Uruapan, reported this Monday the arrest of a person for the murder of her husband and former municipal president, on November 1. “They arrested another person who was involved in the WhatsApp group,” Carlos Manzo’s widow told the media after a session at town hall. Quiroz did not provide further information and assured that he had not yet contacted Carlos Torres Piña, attorney general of the state of Michoacán. “I have not had any contact with the prosecutor. I hope to have a conversation with him in the coming days,” he commented.
The WhatsApp group in which the detained person would be involved is the one from which the crime was planned and in which the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco would be involved, according to Omar García Harfuch, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection. So far, the results of the investigation into the assassination of Carlos Manzo have shown that the mayor was closely monitored. In the chat through which the alleged perpetrators communicated, his killers exchanged messages hours before the attack and show how they followed his footsteps long before he arrived in the main square of Uruapan.
This new arrest joins those of two other men, Jorge Armando and Jaciel, accused of having participated in the attack which cost Manzo his life. The first of them is the alleged mastermind of the crime, while the second is accused of having recruited Víctor Manuel Ubaldo, the shooter, and two of his accomplices, Ramiro and Fernando Josué Leal. Ubaldo, a 17-year-old from Paracho who shot Manzo six times during Day of the Dead celebrations, died minutes later at the hands of Manzo’s bodyguards after he was already incapacitated. The bodies of Ramiro, 34, and Fernando Josué, 16, were found a few days later on the highway linking Uruapan to Paracho. Authorities say the two men were murdered by the same criminal group that hired them.
The investigation into the crime that shook Claudia Sheinbaum’s government and called into question its security strategy also led to the arrest of Carlos Manzo’s seven bodyguards for security breaches that day. All were municipal police officers and had been chosen by the former municipal president, whose death gave impetus to the Hat Movement, of which he was the leader.
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