Band Members Found in Well Believed to be Those of Kombo Kolombia
The bodies of 18 people have found in a well in Mexico, with several of the missing bodies being identified as band members of a group that went missing on Thursday.
Members of Kombo Kolombia were reported missing on Friday by their family members after a Thursday night performance near Monterrey. Police began searching the area where the band last performed and along the highway. A total of 18 bodies were found in a well, and four of those have been positively identified as members of Kombo Kolombia.
According to Nuevo Leon state spokesman Jesus Valencia, a witness and band member reported seeing 10 armed men enter the bar where the band was performing and forced them into vehicles waiting outside, according to the LA Times. The band member, who wanted to remain anonymous, managed to escape but saw his fellow band mates being beaten and shot.
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"This was a direct attack," Jorge Domene, a spokesman for the Nuevo Leon government, told the New York Times. "It was not random."
"We are going to continue looking for them," Governor Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz said of the attackers in a TV interview. "We are also going to investigate to find the motive, why it happened, and in the even that the taking of their lives is confirmed, what was behind this and of course, capturing those that did it."
There is the possibility that the attack was drug-related, with Mexican cartels targeting musicians that play a certain type of music known as "narcocorridos," which, according to the New York Times, "glorify the criminal underworld and end up offending well-armed listeners."
Kombo Kolombia was not known for playing narcocorridos but was performing in one of the most violent states in Mexico, the LA Times pointed out.
"We assume their killers are related to some kind of criminal group," Valencia said. "They could have played a song someone did not like or said something someone did not like. We don't know."
