A student was killed in a confrontation with police in southern Mexico, authorities said Friday, as tensions flared over the case of 43 students from the same college who disappeared nearly a decade ago.
A second student from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college was wounded in the incident on Thursday night in Guerrero, the circumstances of which were disputed.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters that the pair were traveling in a stolen car when police ordered them to stop near the entrance to the state capital Chilpancingo.
“The police say that the young men opened fire, the police responded and unfortunately a young man lost his life,” Lopez Obrador said, adding that the second person was not seriously hurt.
“It wasn’t a clash between police and protesters,” he said.
According to the Guerrero public security secretariat, a firearm was found in the vehicle.
But Clemente Rodriguez, father of one of the 43 students who disappeared in 2014, rejected the official version and said that the two men were unarmed.
He said that security camera footage showed them taking cover behind a vehicle while police shot at them.
“You see in the video the young men are hiding and protecting themselves from the police aggression,” Rodriguez told local radio station Grupo Formula.
After the incident, students from Ayotzinapa went to protest in Chilpancingo, allegedly setting fire to at least one vehicle.
The shooting took place a day after protesters smashed open a door to Mexico’s presidential palace demanding to meet Lopez Obrador to discuss the case of the 43 students — one of the country’s worst human rights atrocities.
The students had commandeered buses to travel to a demonstration in Mexico City — a common practice in their radical left-wing school.
Investigators believe they were kidnapped by a drug cartel in collusion with corrupt police, although exactly what happened to them is unclear.
In 2022, a truth commission set up by the government branded the case a “state crime” and said the military shared responsibility, either directly or through negligence.
