Summary The first bus driver said he did not report the abductions for fear he would be targeted.
MEXICO CITY (AFP) - Five people -- and not 15 as a bus driver had initially claimed -- were abducted in Mexico’s violence-plagued northern state of Tamaulipas, an official said on Friday.
The driver had reported the kidnapping of what he believed were 15 passengers on Thursday after he reached a security checkpoint in the neighboring state of Coahuila and police saw that some of the vehicle’s windows were broken.
The story alarmed many in Mexico, a country plagued by a relentless wave of murders and disappearances linked to drug gangs.
But it proved to be inaccurate, according to Tamaulipas interior chief Herminio Garza.
He said other bus drivers indicated gunmen had boarded the vehicle in question, but that they made five people get off.
The first bus driver said he did not report the abductions for fear he would be targeted. But he changed his story when he spoke with the authorities.
Tamaulipas is one of Mexico’s most violent states as the Zetas and Gulf cartels fight for control of drug-trafficking routes.
More than 28,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico in the past decade, including 5,700 in Tamaulipas alone.
In one of the country’s most notorious mass abductions, police in the southern state of Guerrero snatched 43 students in September 2014 and handed them over to a drug cartel, which allegedly slaughtered the group in a case that remains unsolved.
