Mexico Shootout Update: Photos Raise Questions About Whether Police Planted Guns

Mexico Shootout Update: Photos Raise Questions About Whether Police Planted Guns
By Angelo Young @angeloyoung_ a.young@ibtimes.com on May 24 2015 10:55 PM EDT

Forty-two were killed. Three were taken alive. Following Friday’s shootout between federal police and suspected drug gang members at a western Mexico ranch, many are questioning whether police ever intended to make arrests or simply executed the men they targeted.

"It was a true act of savagery. Our relatives are unrecognizable," one woman waiting for the release of her relative’s corpse from a state forensics center in Morelia, the state capital of Michoacán, told El Universal newspaper.

"This was not a clash, it was a massacre," Victor Hugo Reynoso, who was at the center to retrieve the body of his brother Luis Alberto, told the Agence France-Presse.

About 70 family members were waiting Sunday to recover the bodies of loved ones. One police officer was killed in a hourslong gunbattle that began when federal police pursued suspects to a 277-acre ranch in Ecuandureo, a town in Tanhuato municipality. Photos after the shootout showed rows of machine guns that were found at the property. “A pursuit began that led to the ranch. The rest of the criminals inside the ranch started to attack the federal forces with intensity,” National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said late Friday.

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