Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, July 30, 2026 – Two young women recovered from the Ameca River died by drowning and had no signs of violence, Jalisco prosecutors said, shifting the investigation toward an apparent accident involving a recreational off-road vehicle.
The women had been traveling together in a side-by-side vehicle, commonly known as the Polaris RZR, near the Jalisco-Nayarit border, according to the latest account of the investigation. Interviews with relatives and friends established that the women knew each other and had been together before they disappeared.
Investigators believe the vehicle entered the river, although they are still working to determine where that happened and reconstruct the group’s route before the apparent accident.
Alejandro Torres Ramírez, head of the state prosecutor’s regional investigation division, said autopsies conducted by the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences determined that both women died from asphyxia by submersion. Examiners found no injuries indicating that either woman had been assaulted.
Regional reports identified the women as 18-year-old Yareli Guadalupe Colmenares Tovar and Sharon Viridiana, both from Tebelchía, a rural community in the Las Palmas delegation of Puerto Vallarta. Sharon’s body was located Sunday near the El Colomo crossing. Yareli was found farther upriver near the La Gaviota diversion dam during a search involving relatives and residents of Tebelchía.
The findings clarify part of a case that initially involved several unidentified bodies recovered in rapid succession from the Ameca and Mascota rivers. Vallarta Daily previously reported the first three recoveries while officials were still determining the victims’ identities and whether the deaths were connected.
A man recovered on the Jalisco side of the Ameca River also died by drowning and showed no signs of violence. He had not been identified when prosecutors issued Thursday’s update. Torres said investigators had found no apparent link between that man and the two women, partly because of the distance separating the recovery sites.
Prosecutors also have not connected the women’s deaths to another male body recovered in Nayarit. Although early regional accounts grouped all four deaths as part of one RZR accident, the latest statement from Jalisco authorities directly links only the two women to the off-road vehicle.
The deaths were initially processed under the state’s feminicide investigation protocol. That procedure does not mean prosecutors classified the case as feminicide. Jalisco law requires the protocol in every violent death involving a woman or girl so that bodies, recovery sites and possible evidence receive a detailed examination before gender-based violence is ruled out.
The investigation is now centered on locating the point where the RZR entered the river and establishing the women’s movements before the accident.
