VIDEO: Mexico police officer kills Salvadoran woman by kneeling on her back
- 01 Apr 2021
Mexican authorities are searching for the daughter of Salvadoran woman Victoria Salazar, who died after a female police officer was seen in a video kneeling on her back, a case that triggered an outpouring of anger in Mexico.
The attorney general's office of the state of Quintana Roo, where Salazar died, said on Tuesday shortly before midnight that an amber alert had been issued for her daughter, 16-year-old Francela Yaritza Salazar Arriaza. Francela was last seen in the Caribbean tourist resort of Tulum, where her mother was killed.
Salazar's partner was arrested on Tuesday for abuse of her and her daughters, Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquin said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador this week said Salazar, 36, had been subject to "brutal treatment and murdered" after her detention on Saturday by four police officers. 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.
"They used excessive force," her mother, Rosibel Arriaza, told Mexican television network TV Azteca. She noted that her daughter's death was similar to that of George Floyd.
Newly released surveillance camera video, published by Mexican newspaper Reforma, showed Salazar looking frightened and holding on to workers in a convenience store just before police arrived at the scene, apparently in the run-up to her death.
The Quintana Roo attorney general's office has opened a homicide investigation into her death, which has led to the arrest of the four officers seen on videos of the incident.
