economic or social status. It is safe to assume that the members of that lynch mob were on the lower end of both scales.
Over the years, fueled by the citizens’ mistrust of the judicial system, the concept of “Indigenous Justice” has mutated into what is commonly known as “Traditional Justice” or “People’s Justice.” Conveniently falling by the wayside are the limitations noted above.
Motorcycle crime, where one or two criminals perform brazen holdups, sometimes at gunpoint, and escape astride small-engine bikes, is common in Ecuador. In numerous cases, the swift action of the citizenry has resulted in the suspects being apprehended, beaten, and their bikes set afire, before they are able to leave the neighborhood.
By the time the police arrive, they will find only a charred and, perhaps, still-smoking motorbike and a couple of dazed and bloody thieves. The neighbors quickly retreat to their homes and a “wall of silence” goes up, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the police to build a case (assuming they want to). The people could not care less. In their minds, justice has been served.
You are likely thinking right now: “That’s all very interesting, but how did a seemingly innocuous crime such as the theft of two hundred dollars and a couple of cell phones, even with the added element of drugging the victims during the robbery, result in the gruesome murder of three suspects in full view of the local police?”
The answer lies in the collision of centuries-old notions of justice with the lightning speed of modern technology. A rumor spread quickly on social media that one of the children had died as a result of ingesting scopolamine. Although neither of the children was actually given the drug or harmed in any way, this rumor inflamed the souls of the locals, who already were mistrustful of the police and the local judiciary.
The woman who made the initial call to the police (her name has been withheld for her protection) later changed some aspects of her story in a late-night statement to the police.
“I went to school with my daughter, my friend and her daughter. Two people approached us. They tried to sell us a fake ring. Then they enchanted us, drugged us. We came to a place; I don’t know how we got there. They put me in a vehicle, but I was able to escape, and they left. They stole my cell phone, my friend’s cell phone, and some cash. We, at that moment of fright, we misunderstand or something, I don’t know, but the children never got in the car. The one who got in the car was me.”
The police acted quickly enough in rounding up the suspects in the lynching. They studied videotapes of the conflict and sent plainclothes detectives and special police units into the barrios (neighborhoods) of Posorja, El Morro, and Playas.
On the morning of October 18, less than forty-eight hours after the incident, General Tannya Varela said that eight suspects had been detained and transferred to Guayaquil for an “audiencia de flagrancia” (similar to an arraignment or preliminary hearing in the US judicial system). That afternoon, Judge José Ortega agreed with the prosecutor’s request, and all eight were placed in preventive detention for the crime of murder. Murder, as defined in Article 140 of the COIP (the Ecuadorian Organic Criminal Code), carries a sentence of twenty-two to twenty-six years in prison.
The prosecutor’s office also opened investigations into three other individuals for the crimes of instigation, theft, arson, and destruction of public property.
The two women who were the victims of the theft that morning, and who initially raised the alarm to the police, were ultimately entered into the Attorney General’s Victim and Witness Protection Program after receiving death threats from relatives of the deceased.
Minister of the Interior María Paula Romo said in a televised interview that “what happened is unacceptable, there is no possibility of justifying a lynching that ended with the murder of three people. That case will not remain in impunity and in this regard, there are eight people detained.”
Romo went on to caution that citizens should avoid spreading false information. “We are concerned about the situation of our children, their safety, but we must act responsibly.”
The local police defended their actions, or lack thereof, during the riot. “We had no riot gear and not nearly enough officers to stand up against two thousand angry citizens,” said one officer. “We were completely overwhelmed. I feared for my life, and for the lives of my fellow officers.” The families of the victims were not satisfied with the police department’s words, or their actions.
“The cops had enough time to ask for reinforcements, and they didn’t,” a relative of one of the deceased claimed. “There is a video where they are heard saying, ‘They’re going to burn them.’ So why didn’t they call for reinforcements earlier?”
Relatives of Jackeline Figueroa, the murdered woman who left behind five children, said that the three had been arrested at noon, but the families had not been notified and only found out what had happened on social media.
Regardless of where one stands on the issue of vigilante justice, it is readily evident that what happened in Posorja on that warm, cloudy afternoon in October 2018 was a tragedy. So, how did it go so horribly wrong?
The story begins exactly two months before. On August 16, thirteen-year-old Kerly Loor disappeared. According to the newsmagazine Vistazo, the girl’s mother, Gloria Bones, went to the local police station. An officer posted a picture of the girl on the department’s Facebook page, asking for information. In a matter of a few hours, the picture had been shared thousands of times. As a result of the publicity, a woman reported having seen the child in the company of a young man in the Barrio Cristo Vive. The woman stated that the young man was new to the neighborhood and was considered by the locals to be a suspicious character. Señora Bones took the name of the young man to the local UPC, where she was told that he had a record for the rape of a minor. The police promised to “look into it,” and the distraught mother went home to wait.
Around two in the morning, she received a phone call from her daughter. “Mama,” the girl said. “I’m lost. I don’t know where I am.” The connection was broken, and the frantic mother again went to the police, but was told that they didn’t have the proper equipment to trace the call. She was then told that she would have to go to Guayaquil to the office of the Attorney General.
Having already made the all-day round-trip journey twice without success, Señora Bones was devastated at the thought of doing it once more. She wept so uncontrollably that one of the officers took it upon himself to phone a colleague in Guayaquil. The colleague was able to trace the call to the bus station in the town of Chone, 330 kilometers (two hundred miles) north, in the province of Manabí. The girl was found in the bus station, disoriented and apparently drugged. Miraculously, she had been able to escape from her captor and make the phone call. Her abductor, however, was nowhere to be found.
A few weeks later, as Kerly still struggled to overcome the effects of her ordeal, the young man was again seen in Posorja, in the same barrio. The girl’s mother went immediately to the police but was told that if the girl was no longer in the custody of the young man, they could do nothing.
Kerly suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to live with relatives in another town, while her mother wept in frustration and despair. The young man in question began to receive death threats and soon after, he left town.
A short time later, a ten-year-old girl from another local barrio was drugged and abducted. She was found in the bus station in Loja, five hundred kilometers (three hundred miles) to the southeast. It is not clear if the perpetrator was the same man who kidnapped Kerly, because the police made no formal investigation. Their reasoning? They did not catch the perpetrator “in the act.”
“There
