The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Benjamin Mondragon Pereda, the leader of a Mexican drug gang, killed himself Tuesday following a gun battle with federal police. The man is suspected in the disappearance of a group of dozens of college students last month.
The whereabouts of the 43 missing students are still unknown according to Jesus Murillo Karam, Attorney General of Mexico.
28 bodies were discovered in a mass grave near the site of Mondragon's arrest, according Mexico's attorney general. Despite the suspicious circumstances of the site, the bodies do not belong to any of the students who have been missing since they were confronted by the police in the city of Iguala.
Apparently the police of Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula have been arrested and admitted to being involved with the abduction of the students. Prosecutors are arguing that the police are the ones that took the students and presented them to the Guerrero Unidos cartel, who then had ordered them to be killed.
Per Inaky Blanco, Guerrero state prosecutor, the students were attending a demonstration in Iguala that eventually turned very violent, causing police to open fire on all demonstrators. Six were killed in the incident and dozens of students were detained by police. This was the last recorded sighting of the group.
Mondragon shot himself early Tuesday after being surrounded by police in Jiutepec, a city in Morelos state.
Prior to his death, Mondragon negotiated for the safe exit of a pregnant woman he was with at the time. Seeing no way out, authorities say he immediately shot himself.
Mondragon's gang specializes in the transport of marijuana and heroin to Chicago, if working with local authorities on the night the 43 freshmen from a rural teaching college went missing.
At this time the police do not know the identity of any of the individuals inside of the grave, but the site is the latest in what has become an unfortunate trend in Mexican crime. Several mass graves have also been discovered in and around the area.
To make matters worse, the city has little centralized leadership at the moment as the mayor of Iguala has fled town. It is now believed that he had ties to Guerrero Unidos.
As the amount of crime continues to ramp up, these events have highlighted the close ties between local authorities and the organized crime in towns across Guerrero, widely known in the country as one of Mexico's most dangerous states.
The protests that the students were attending were held in demonstration against the violent acts. These protests have continued to escalate as the days went on and culminated in the Guerrero government headquarters being set on fire by protesters on Monday.
