MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican prosecutors are investigating the death of a woman who was captured on video pinned to the ground by police in the Caribbean beach resort of Tulum, authorities said on Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office of the state of Quintana Roo said police at the scene were being questioned over the incident on Saturday and that the woman’s cause of death was not yet clear. Nor was it clear why she was detained, she added.
A video published by news site Noticaribe showed the woman squirming and crying out as she lay face down on a road with a policewoman kneeling on her back with male officers standing by.
The video, whose authenticity Reuters could not immediately verify, then cut to show the woman’s prone, handcuffed body lying on the road. Officers are later seen moving the limp, shoeless body into the back of a police truck.
The National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (CONAVIM) condemned the incident on Twitter and said it was in communication with authorities to ensure that those responsible were held to account.
Alejandro Encinas, deputy interior minister responsible for human rights, expressed outrage on Twitter, and described the incident as an act of “police abuse.”
The incident bore a similarity to the case of George Floyd, an African-American man whose death in May as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck sparked racial justice protests in the United States and around the world.
Widespread and rising violence against women has long outraged many Mexicans, and has sparked major protests under the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
(Reporting by Dave Graham, Ana Isabel Martinez and Diego Ore; Editing by Peter Cooney)
