Two police patrol vehicles were set on fire after a student from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero was murdered by state police in Chilpancingo on Thursday.
On Wednesday morning, Ayotzinapa students used a pickup truck to break open wooden doors at the National Palace during a protest related to the kidnapping and murder in 2014 of 43 student-teachers at the Ayotzinapa school.
On Thursday night, Yanqui Rothan Gómez Peralta, 23, was shot and killed by police.
Ayotzinapa students responded to the death of their fellow future teacher by seizing and setting on fire two state police vehicles in Chilpancingo, local media reported. The Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College is located around 15 kilometers east of the state capital in the municipality of Tixtla.
The death of the young man raises tension at a time when the families of the 43 abducted students, current Ayotzinapa students and others are already angry about the state’s role in setting up the kidnapping and disappearance of the Ayotziapa 43.
Well over 100 people — including military personnel and police officers — have been arrested in connection with the students’ disappearance, but no one has faced trial or been convicted of the crime. The remains of just three students have been found.
The current government initiated a new investigation soon after taking office and pledged to definitively determine what happened to the student-teachers. But just seven months before the end of López Obrador’s six-year term, it still hasn’t delivered on its promise.