MEXICO CITY, Mexico, Weds. March 31, 2021 (Reuters) – Mexican authorities have arrested the partner of a Salvadoran woman who died after a Mexican female police officer was seen in a video kneeling on her back, a case that triggered an outpouring of anger in Mexico, media reported on Tuesday.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador this week said 36-year-old Victoria Salazar Arriaza had been subject to “brutal treatment and murdered” after her detention on Saturday by four police officers in the tourist resort of Tulum on the Caribbean coast. An autopsy showed Salazar’s neck had been broken.
Her death, which had echoes of the case of George Floyd, an African-American man who died in May as a Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck, sparked outrage on social media and calls by El Salvador’s president for the officers to be punished.
Carlos Joaquin, the governor of Quintana Roo, said Salazar’s partner had been arrested for “abusing” her and her daughters, according to Mexican TV channel Milenio.
“Today the arrest was made, they tell me,” Joaquin said, referring to state prosecutor’s office, according to Milenio.
Joaquin said more details will be revealed on Wednesday.
The attorney general’s office of Quintana Roo state has opened a homicide investigation into the deaths, which has led to the arrest of the four officers seen on videos of the incident.
A video published by news site Noticaribe showed Salazar writhing and crying out as she lay face down on a road with a policewoman kneeling on her back while male officers stood by.
The video later showed Salazar’s prone, handcuffed body, lying on the road before officers put it into the back of a police truck.
(Reporting by Noe Torres; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
