A 20-year-old man was arrested in Guadalajara on Wednesday after allegedly murdering two women at a university and another woman at a motel in the Jalisco capital.
A man identified as Gabriel Alejandro “N” is accused of stabbing to death two university administrative workers at the Olímpica campus of the Technological University of Guadalajara (UTEG) late Wednesday afternoon. One of the victims was reportedly 35, the other 40.
🚨 Un hombre fue detenido por el presunto asesinato de dos mujeres en la UTEG. El agresor, de 20 años de edad, estaría vinculado a un homicidio previo en un motel.
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A 20-year-old suspect was arrested on Wednesday, not long after the murders of two women at a university campus and one at a motel.
It appears they were the first people the aggressor came across after he entered the campus, where security measures are supposedly in place to prevent the unauthorized entry of outsiders. Gabriel Alejandro is not a UTEG student or staff member.
Earlier on Wednesday, the suspect is believed to have murdered a young woman in a room at a motel a few kilometers from the university. The approximately 22-year-old victim was stabbed in the chest and neck, authorities said. Video footage shows Gabriel Alejandro entering the motel a few hours before he allegedly committed the double murder at UTEG.
At the university, the aggressor reportedly pursued students with a knife and a small ax that he used to smash windows. In addition to allegedly murdering the two women, he is accused of wounding a 25-year-old man who confronted him. Panic-stricken students hid in classrooms to avoid the attacker.
The 25-year-old victim — a university employee who witnessed the murders of the two women — left the university after he was injured and alerted police to the presence of the assailant, according to the El Universal newspaper. Police subsequently arrested and disarmed Gabriel Alejandro in a classroom he had barricaded with chairs. A video shows the handcuffed suspect being put into a police vehicle.
Jalisco Attorney General Luis Joaquín Méndez Ruiz told a press conference that authorities couldn’t rule out the possibility that the suspect committed other crimes — perhaps even femicides — before the murders on Wednesday.
He said there was no “apparent motive” for the murders on Wednesday, but noted that an individual had provided information to authorities that indicated that the suspect belonged to an online group where members share stories about crimes of “fanaticism.”
It wasn’t completely clear what that meant, but the news outlet Latinus interpreted the remark as meaning that the group is “fanatical” about “extreme violence.”
It wasn’t clear whether Gabriel Alejandro had disclosed an intent to commit the crimes he allegedly perpetrated on Wednesday.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro described the events at UTEG as “the terrible ending of a horror story that is difficult to explain and which dismays us as a society.”
On the X social media platform, he said the suspect perpetrated the attack “without reason” and pledged to not rest until “he suffers the consequences” of his actions. The governor said he was unable to understand just how “rotten our social fabric must be to arrive at tragedies as raw, painful and inexplicable as this.”
UTEG said in a statement that it was “fully collaborating” with authorities in their investigation into “this terrible incident. Classes have been canceled at all of the university’s campuses “until further notice.”
Jalisco is one of Mexico’s most violent states, but most homicides committed there are related to organized crime.
With reports from El Universal, Proceso, La Silla Rota and Latinus
