Samuel ran down the steep dirt track lined with blue and pink houses desperate to escape. The 20-year-old took long strides and ran from one side to the other in a zigzag. He begged for someone to open the door of a house so he could hide, but nobody did. That mid-morning, the poor and violent neighborhood of La Laja in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco seemed suddenly deserted.
A few moments before, three gunmen had burst into a tortilla shop called Los Mangos, where Samuel worked, and started shooting. His only co-worker, Rodolfo, had also escaped those first bullets. But, as Rodolfo fled to the roof he was shot in the back. He fell from the first floor to the ground, dead. His corpse lay at the entrance to the business.
Samuel knew he was the next target as he hurtled down the track. One of the gunmen who looked about the same age as him, took aim and fired his 9mm pistol, but he missed.
This allowed Samuel to reach the tarmac and the possibility of reaching the corner and into an alley that would have taken him out of sight of the hitman. He was within 10 yards of the turn when the bullet pierced his skull and he collapsed to the ground.
The gunmen, thinking their job was done, left.
But Samuel was still alive. When police arrived half an hour later, he was lying on his back spitting blood and begging not to be left to die. “Hold on, chavo! The Red Cross is on its way,” one of the officers told him. “Do not fall asleep.”
Samuel Sotelo Jurado died in the hospital a few hours later. It was January 7, 2016.
This reconstruction of Samuel’s murder draws from witness accounts told to VICE News a month after the event. The Los Mangos tortilla shop, and its red door, have been closed since the shooting. Some old wooden boards are stained with what looks like blood. A small burnt wallet lies on the counter. There is nothing else to indicate that two young men were killed there a month ago, other than the fear that hangs in the air.
The deaths at Los Mangos are just two of many associated with a drug cartel war on the tortilla industry in the southern state of Guerrero — where dozens of criminal groups fight for control of opium poppy plantations in the mountains, and drug shipment and distribution spots in the cities. Three days before, two other tortilla workers were killed in Cañada de los Amates, another Acapulco neighborhood. Two more were murdered on the same day in the Loma Bonita area.
Read the Remainder at Vice
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