Missing Mexican congressman found dead in Zacatecas

Images from surveillance cameras appear to show the moment Gomez was abducted on Monday.

Mexican authorities discovered the charred body of federal congressman Gabriel Gomez Michel in Zacatecas on Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after he was kidnapped in Guadalajara.

A member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Gomez represented the eighth district of western Jalisco state in Mexico’s House of Deputies. He was abducted at around 5 p.m. Monday while driving to Guadalajara’s international airport to catch a flight back to Mexico City.

CCTV images circulating on social media purportedly show the moment that Gomez was kidnapped at the intersection of 8 de Julio street and the Periferico ringroad in the municipality of Tlaquepaque. The images show men aboard a white Toyota Sienna pulling up beside Gomez’s black Suburban, although Mexican newspaper Excelsior reported that assailants in as many as six vehicles participated in the abduction by surrounding the victim’s car.

Jalisco Prosecutor General Carlos Najera confirmed the following day that the bodies of Gomez and one of his assistants had been found in a burnt-out car in Apulco, Zacatecas, just across the border from Jalisco. The bodies were badly burned but DNA tests are expected to confirm the identities of the victims.

Gomez, who served as mayor of El Grullo, Jalisco from 2010 to 2012, is the first federal legislator to be murdered since Moises Villanueva, also of the PRI, was killed alongside his chauffeur in the southern state of Guerrero in September 2011.