Four Mexican soldiers were sentenced Monday to 40 years and nine months in prison after being convicted of five counts of homicide and one count of attempted homicide.
The soldiers sentenced were found guilty of indiscriminately firing upon a pickup truck in which seven civilians were riding in the early-morning hours of Feb. 26, 2023. The civilians were returning from a night out in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo after celebrating the impending birth of one victim’s first child.
Families of the victims celebrated the outcome of the trial but urged federal authorities to stand firm in the face of a likely appeal by the sentenced soldiers.
The defendants remain under guard at a military base in Mexico City. If they lose their appeal, they must serve their sentences in a civilian prison.
The presiding judge also ordered the commander of the XVI Motorized Cavalry Regiment — the soldiers’ home base — to issue a public apology to the families.
The four soldiers were formally charged with five counts of homicide and one count of attempted homicide in April 2023, six weeks after the incident.
The defendants were among 21 soldiers on patrol that February morning. As part of their defense, they declared that they heard a loud bang and opened fire on what they claimed was a fleeing vehicle. Three of the defendants initially said they opened fire to support the first soldier who started shooting.
One of the two survivors testified that the soldiers fired at least two shots at his wounded friends after the pickup had stopped. He also denied that they were fleeing from the soldiers.
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) investigated the predawn incident and called the shootings unjustified.
The CNDH report concluded that soldiers in four patrol vehicles had followed the pickup based on a “suspicion” and did not follow proper procedure in engaging the vehicle.
“Without giving verbal orders [to pull over], one soldier opened fire into the back of the private vehicle, and three other soldiers did the same to support the first one,” the report said.
Only four of the 21 soldiers on patrol opened fire, the CNDH said, but they fired a total of 117 shots at the pickup.
The Defense Ministry (Sedena) initially said that the soldiers had heard gunshots, then approached a pickup truck with no license plates and no lights on in the darkness.
“Upon seeing the Army troops, they (the occupants) accelerated in a brusque and evasive way,” Sedena said in a pretrial statement.
In another version of the events, the soldiers said the truck sped away from them and crashed into a parked vehicle. It was only after the crash, the soldiers said, that they opened fire.
Crime scene reports found no evidence of weapons in the pickup after the shootings, and the CNDH report also stated that there was no evidence of any shots fired at the military patrol.
Nuevo Laredo has been the scene of human rights violations by the military in the past, according to The Associated Press.
Only three months after the February 2023 incident, soldiers were involved in a high-speed chase after which five civilians were killed despite apparently surrendering in what then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador described as an execution.
Sedena said at the time that 16 soldiers would face military charges. However, by January 2024, 13 of the 16 had been released.
Mexico has a separate military judicial system, but soldiers must be tried in federal civilian courts for offenses that involve nonmilitary victims.
With reports from El Universal, Proceso, El País and The Associated Press
