The former head of the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (IJCF) Luis Octavio Cotero, revealed today that the refrigeration container that was recently abandoned with about a hundred corpses in western Mexico is not the only one. There is a second truck, which in total would be about 300 bodies being stored in refrigerated trucks.
This vehicle is located in the facilities of the IJCF, unlike the refrigeration trailer that was abandoned twice in the municipalities of Tlaquepaque and Tlajomulco, a decision that was not reported to the coroner, said the former director, who was dismissed yesterday by the Governor of the State of Jalisco, Aristotle Sandoval.
Cotero said that in both refrigerant trucks there are up to 300 bodies that the IJCF does not have the capacity to protect, due to the increase in violence in the state in the last three years.
“They are in the trailers, one that was shown in the media and the other was hired by the prosecution because we do not have the resources to hire that type of service, nor the warehouse where they were,” he said.
The former state official announced that to date there are 444 corpses waiting to be identified or buried in the Forensic Medical Service, so the IJCF made an effort to keep up to 144 of them, while the rest were confined to two refrigerated trucks.
“The capacity of the refrigerators is 72, but they have 144 because they had to force a little capacity, there is too much demand for attention to these bodies,” said Cotero.
The refrigerator unit, which was officially in the custody of the state forensic body, was abandoned in the municipality of Tlaquepaque and then moved to Tlajomulco. On Saturday it was placed under the protection of the Jalisco prosecutor’s office.
Cotero disclaimed any responsibility for the abandonment of those bodies and accused the prosecution and the state government of not doing what was necessary so that the corpses are preserved in adequate refrigerators or buried in a forensic cemetery.
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According to statistics from the IJCF, up to July 2018, there had been 552 murders, and there are currently some 3,000 people listed as missing.
From June to August of this year the bodies of 49 people were found in eight clandestine graves in the municipalities of Tlajomulco, Tlaquepaque, El Salto, Juanacatlán and Guadalajara.
The Jalisco authorities have attributed the increase in violence and the increase in murders to a dispute between the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel and the Nueva Plaza Cartel.
