The payment of a kidnapper’s ransom failed to save the life of a 13-year-old boy in Nuevo León, abducted March 1 and later killed.

Víctor Alfredo Ponce of Guadalupe, Nuevo León, was murdered by his captors who continued negotiating regardless and succeeded in obtaining a ransom payment of 150,000 pesos (almost US $8,000).

Investigators have determined that the youth died from a knife wound the day after he was taken.

It wasn’t until Wednesday night that the teenager’s body was found in deserted spot on the outskirts of the municipality of García.

Today, police arrested David Emanuel Carrales Guevara, a former employee of Ponce’s father. The newspaper Reforma reported that unnamed sources say the suspect had learned while on the job one day that Ponce was planning to apply for a 3-million-peso loan, after which he hatched the kidnapping ploy.

Sources also said that despite Ponce’s relatives having filed a formal complaint before the state Specialized Anti-Kidnapping Unit (Unidad Especializada Antisecuestros, or Ueas), its director allowed the criminals to collect the ransom money without apprehending them.

Some state officials are now accusing the head of the anti-kidnapping unit of frustrating the arrest of suspects in this and several other cases. They say that Héctor Chapa García stopped the arrests on the grounds that they could not be carried out at the moment of payment of the ransom due to aspects of the new criminal justice system.

In the Ponce case the victim’s family hired a team of private investigators who identified the kidnappers.

Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp)