A group of indigenous people have lynched to death the driver of a truck which, a few moments earlier, had run over an indigenous woman and her baby in the suburbs of Bogota, Colombian authorities said on Wednesday (January 26th).
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The incident took place on the night of Monday to Tuesday, when the driver, an employee of a refuse collection company, "
ran over a 36-year-old mother and her one-year-old and nine-month-old daughter (.. .) who unfortunately
passed away ,” the municipality of Bogota said in a statement.
Locals then assaulted and beat the 60-year-old driver, who died of his injuries in hospital.
Intervention attempts
According to images posted on social networks, the crowd forced the victim out of his truck, before beating him to death, despite attempts to intervene by several traffic officers on the spot.
The mother - who members of her community say was pregnant - and her daughter belonged to the Emberá Katío people, whose war-displaced members have occupied a central Bogota park since September to protest the withdrawal of a grant that paid for their accommodation in the city.
At the end of 2021, dozens of them agreed to be transferred to an official establishment on the outskirts of the city, near the site where the accident took place.
These natives say they arrived in Bogota to flee clashes between armed groups who have been fighting for years for drug trafficking and illegal mining in the jungle of the department of Choco (west), where the Emberá originate Katio.
According to Jairo Montañez, their spokesperson, five of them have died in "
different circumstances
" since September 29, when their protest movement against the government began.
