In a rural Chihuahua town of about 10,000 people, dozens of residents fed up with kidnappings took justice into their own hands Tuesday.

About 300 people of Ascensión beat to death two 17-year-old boys who allegedly had kidnapped a 17-year-old girl Tuesday, said Carlos González, spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general.

Federal police were sent to the area to respond to the incident and to calm the angry mob. The disorderly crowd protested kidnappings that take place in areas where wealthy farmers live.

It all started Tuesday morning, when six or seven men abducted the girl from an Ascensión restaurant. Ascensión is a farming town 120 miles southwest of Juárez.

The girl's father called police and the military. González said the man also called his relatives and friends.

González said the Mexican army began the search that morning. It eventually led to a car chase.

The vehicle in which three kidnappers and the girl were traveling rolled over on the highway outside Ascensión, he said. The Mexican army arrested the alleged kidnappers and sent them to Juárez on Tuesday afternoon to present them before a judge. The soldiers rescued the girl, González said.

But in another part of town, things heated up.

Area residents and relatives of the abducted girl found two other alleged kidnappers, who had fallen along with their vehicle into a canal.

Angry residents grabbed the kidnapping suspects about 2 p.m. and beat them to death, González said.

The mob also blocked paramedics and emergency personnel from the scene.
Two other kidnapping suspects remain at large, González said.

Mob justice has not been common in Mexico's war on drugs, despite an inefficient prosecution system and law enforcement corruption.

The previous case was in 2004, when a Mexico City mob burned two undercover federal police officers alive after mistaking them for kidnappers outside a school.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_16138902