10 killed in armed attack on Puebla-area ranch

Ten people including a baby girl were killed during an armed attack in the state of Puebla early Sunday, authorities said.

The massacre occurred on a ranch in Tehuitzingo, a municipality about 120 kilometers south of Puebla City.

Six of the victims were members of the same family, while four were ranch workers, Puebla Attorney General Idamis Pastor Betancourt said Monday. Two of the ranch workers were teenagers. Among the victims was a baby girl aged one month and 20 days. She wasn’t shot but rather suffocated when her mother fell on top of her after she was shot in the back, Pastor said.

The attorney general said that preliminary investigations pointed to “a family issue” related to land ownership as being the motive of the attack. Pastor said that three men related to six of the victims had been identified as the alleged perpetrators. She noted that none of them had yet been arrested, but pledged that the crime wouldn’t go unpunished.

According to media reports, one of the alleged perpetrators is a man called José Alfredo, son of the ranch owner. Along with two other armed men, he allegedly killed his father, his mother and his three siblings, one of whom was just 15.

José Alfredo reportedly escaped from a drug treatment center sometime before he allegedly killed members of his own family on a ranch called “La Marihuana.” The news magazine Proceso reported that he had been sent to the treatment center by his family “due to his addictions” and he perpetrated the attack in “revenge.”

The newspaper 24 Horas reported that José Alfredo “allegedly harbored family grudges related to addiction issues and personal disputes.”

Mass murders are common in Mexico, but are usually related to organized crime rather than family disputes.

However, multiple members of the same family have been killed in previous massacres in Mexico, including one perpetrated in México state in 2022. In 2019, three women and six children belonging to an extended Mormon family with roots in the United States were murdered in the northern state of Sonora.

With reports from El Financiero, Proceso, La Jornada and 24 Horas 

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