The neighbors were gathered on Saturday afternoon drinking coffee inside the house when they heard the first screams. “Help, help!”. A girl had been assaulted and stabbed next to the Casa de la Cultura, in downtown Cuautla, in the state of Morelos, in central Mexico. It was Claudia Tacoronte, a Spanish student who was on an exchange at the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos. The building’s security cameras, accessed by EL PAÍS, recorded a man wearing a white t-shirt and a black backpack several times. First, he is walking and stops. Then, for a minute he disappears from the footage, until he returns running. A camera from another angle captures the entire run. It is 8:50 p.m. At 10:12 p.m., a Facebook video from the local media 45 Digital Noticias records the young woman on the ground. The reporter calls for an ambulance and cooperation: “To neighbors who see a subject with a white jacket or sweatshirt, black backpack, on Los Pinos street heading to Santa Inés, please notify the authorities or stop him.”
Read more Are we all going to die or is it just theater? Arguments against the AI apocalypse
Claudia Tacoronte had arrived in mid-August to Mexico from Spain to do an exchange at the University of Morelos. She was 21 years old and studied Early Childhood Education at the University of Granada. She arrived at the Cuernavaca campus thanks to an agreement between the two educational centers that had been in effect since 2023. That Saturday she decided to travel with a classmate to Cuautla to attend a medicinal plants fair, an event full of workshops and talks about 50 kilometers from the state capital, where she lived.
What the neighbors point out is that after 8:30 p.m. the young woman was walking down the street, in the town center, when she was attacked. “They stabbed the girl and she managed to get into the Casa de la Cultura. It was a robbery. The neighbors here say it was a robbery or an attempted robbery,” the local reporter says in a live video, noting that the young woman was able to run, take shelter in the public building, and scream. That is when more people came to help her.
The journalist from 45 Digital Noticias adds that the attacker also ran away, that they tried to chase him, but “he had an advantage.” That is why the reporter repeats several times how he was dressed and his direction, to see if any of the 43,000 followers of his page can help identify him: “He is wearing a white sweatshirt. Dark backpack. He just injured a young lady.”
Read more The Electoral Board dividedly complies with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the ‘grandchildren law’
Besides asking for help, the reporter is outraged because the authorities had taken “half an hour to respond” to the calls for help. “We kept calling the emergency numbers and they didn’t answer. They sent us to voicemail, left us on hold,” the journalist recounts. In the footage recorded that night, you can still see a body lying on the ground, inside the Casa de la Cultura space, with several people around, protecting it. “The girl is in very bad condition,” the man acknowledges. During the seven minutes the recording lasts, an ambulance and a police patrol arrive.
The medical services could not save Claudia, who has become the fourth student from the University of Morelos murdered in the last seven months. Her case has shaken both countries, and authorities on both sides of the ocean have stated they will “go all the way” to solve it. Meanwhile, a man in white and black backpack is still being sought.
Read more Madring and the pending tasks for the next edition: facilitating overtaking
