UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DISSOLVED IN SULFURIC ACID

Students killed by Mexican cartel were mistaken for rival gang

By Natalie O'Neill

New York Post
April 24, 2018

Three film students who vanished in Mexico were tortured, killed and then dissolved in acid by brutal cartel gangsters — who mistook them for members of a rival gang.

“Words can’t describe the dimension of this madness,” Oscar-winning ”The Shape of Water” director Guillermo del Toro wrote of the tragedy on Twitter Tuesday.

“Three students are killed and dissolved in acid. The ‘why’ is unthinkable, the ‘how’ is terrifying,” the Mexican-born filmmaker said.

Javier Salomon Aceves, 25, Daniel Diaz, 20, and Marco Avalo, 20, had unwittingly been filming a school project at a former hangout for members of the Nueva Plaza gang in Jalisco when they were abducted in March, according to Mexican prosecutors.

Although the home belonged to one of the students’ aunts, hit men from the Jalisco New Generation cartel were watching the house after a Nueva Plaza honcho’s release from prison, investigators told the Times of London.

But they mistook the students for members of the rival gang — with whom they had been battling over drug turf — and abducted them on a road near the house while dressed as police officers, prosecutors said, according to the paper.

The cartel members interrogated the students at a safe house and beat one of them so badly he died — prompting them to kill the other two, chief investigator Lizette Torres told the paper.

They then took them to another home and dumped their bodies in sulfuric acid to hide evidence, she said.

Law enforcement found traces of the students’ blood and DNA at the houses along with 46 barrels of sulfuric acid.

The students, who were enrolled at the University of Audiovisual Media in Guadalajara, were last seen alive on March 19.

Investigators also found fake detectives’ credentials at the cartel houses.