THE bodies of two Colombian musicians who went missing last week in Mexico have been found, authorities said on Monday, a day after Colombia’s president made a plea to his Mexican counterpart to help find the artists.
A homicide investigation has been launched into the deaths of Bayron Sanchez, a 31-year-old reggaeton artist known as B-King, and Jorge Herrera, a 35-year-old DJ who performed under the name Regio Clown, the Mexico City prosecutor’s office said on Monday.
The Colombians were last heard from on September 16, the day they were last seen in the upscale Polanco neighborhood of the capital Mexico City, the prosecutor’s office said.
The prosecutor’s office reported that the two Colombians matched the description of two bodies found on September 17 in the town of Cocotitlan in the State of Mexico, outside Mexico City.
Sanchez’s relatives identified his body on Monday, the prosecutor’s office said.
Earlier on Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that local authorities were investigating the Colombians disappearance, after Colombian President Gustavo Petro made a public plea for Sheinbaum’s help in locating them.
In a social media post on Monday afternoon, Petro appeared to confirm the musicians’ deaths, blaming an “international mafia” that he said had been strengthened by the “war on drugs.”
Mexico’s foreign ministry promised Colombian authorities that an “exhaustive investigation” would be carried out to ascertain what happened to the two musicians.
Media outlets have reported that Sanchez is the nephew of the Colombian cartel leader Camilo Torres, alias ‘Fritanga.’ In 2022, the musician spoke about Torres in an interview with a Colombian TV outlet, calling him a very important person in his life.
Torres was a top member of Colombia’s powerful Golf Clan cartel before his 2012 arrest and later convictions in the U.S. and Colombia on drug trafficking charges. – Reuters