5 Students Brutally Murdered By Mexican Cartel After Being Lured By Job Offer

OAN’s Roy Francis
8:30 AM – Saturday, August 19, 2023

Five students whose ages ranged from 19 to 22 were lured to meet with a Mexican drug cartel with a fake job offer. The young men were then kidnapped and brutally murdered by the cartel on video.

According to El Universal, the five young men, who were all childhood friends, were lured into a meeting with the Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) Cartel with a fake job offer. The cartel lured them to the meeting with the intent of recruiting them to their ranks.

The cartel reportedly killed them after the young men refused.

Reports suggest that the five students had contacted a call center in order to gain employment. However, the center was run by the CJNG cartel with the purpose of luring people and forcibly recruiting members to their ranks. The men had reportedly met with a contact in a town after attending a festival in the city of Lagos de Moreno, an area known for cartel violence. They were not seen again until a video of their murders aired.

The graphic video, which had been broadcast on Mexican national television, showed the young men in an abandoned building, duct-taped, beaten, stabbed and beheaded. The video also showed one of the young men being forced to beat, stab and behead one of his friends.

On Wednesday, authorities found the building that the video was recorded in and recovered four bodies that were badly burned. They later found a fifth body in a badly burned car.

Family members identified the five young men who were as Roberto Olmeda 20, Diego Lara 20, Uriel Galván 19, Dante Cedillo 22, and Jaime Martínez 21.

Jalisco state Attorney General Luis Mendez said that authorities are analyzing street surveillance and looking for witnesses to help them with their investigation. Governor Enrique Alfaro linked the drug cartels to the disappearance and the violence in the area, he demanded that federal prosecutors take over the case.

“What we are seeing here is an act clearly linked to organized crime,” Alfaro said. “These are irrational, violent and direct attacks against the stability of Jalisco state, and they demand a reaction from the (federal) government.”

However, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did not confirm that the federal government will join the investigation at any time.

The brutal murder of the five students is identical to a string of murders in 2010 by the old Zetas drug cartel in which they would abduct men from passenger buses that were passing through, and would force them to kill each other with sledgehammers unless they agreed to join the cartel.

In 2011, Mexican authorities had found 48 clandestine graves with the bodies of 193 people in them near the border state of Tamaulipas, with their skulls having been crushed with sledgehammers.