EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Authorities in Jalisco, Mexico, are vowing to bring to justice whoever murdered five men, severed their heads and abandoned their bodies on the side of a highway on Sunday.
The murders come days after Gov. Enrique Alfaro reported that members of a criminal organization blocked a highway and burned vehicles in response to the arrests of two of their members. Local news media said three highways were blocked.
The Jalisco Attorney General’s Office said state police officers early Sunday responded to a call by Mexico’s National Guard regarding bodies abandoned along Federal Highway 80 in the town of Ojuelos near the Zacatecas state line.
“Several security personnel corroborated the find of five bodies, apparently all of them males, with their pants and wrapped in plastic bags,” the AG’s Office said in a statement. “They also located another bag apparently containing the heads of the victims, whose ages have not been determined.”
State officials said the bodies have been removed from the highway and taken to a medical facility for an autopsy. “A prosecutor accompanied by police investigators has opened a case file to establish the facts and arrest those who may be responsible,” the AG’s Office said.
Authorities did not identify the criminal organization that blocked highways and burned vehicles days earlier. Local media said the region is a bastion of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG.
The Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels have been at war for at least three years in the neighboring state of Zacatecas, whose network of highways leads to practically every major Mexican border city with the U.S.
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