Fed Up

A Mexican town goes berserk (and I can't say I blame them):

Ascension is a farming community of some 15,000 people, about 100 miles south of the border with New Mexico. In the past two years, kidnapping and extortion have been rampant.

...The public fury happened Tuesday when an armed group allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from her family's seafood restaurant. The kidnappers escaped down a gravel road, and word of the missing girl spread quickly.

Soon, a group of about 200 residents began the chase. Three of the alleged kidnappers were captured by the Mexican military, who have a presence in the town.
Three others fled into a nearby cotton field, where one was later found dead. The other two were hunted down and beaten by the mob from Ascension.

"When they found them, it was a direct aggression," says Ignacio Rodriguez, a local kitchen-cabinet maker who was elected to head city council next month.

The girl was rescued unharmed by the residents.

...Federal police eventually took custody of the two young men and drove them to the town's small military base.

Residents say at least 1,000 people then caught up with them at the base and broke through the gates. The mob got ahold of the suspected kidnappers and beat them a second time.

The crowd then held them for seven hours, locked in a hot vehicle where they eventually died.

...Rodriguez, the future city councilman, says he's not proud of how his town responded to the kidnapping. Mob violence is not common in Chihuahua, one of the most violent states in the country.

Rodriguez says citizens in Ascension are forming a sort of neighborhood watch committee and are still deciding how the committee will operate.

"If the authorities can't protect us," he says, "we must protect ourselves."