Eight months after her disappearance, Monica de Leon Barba, a California woman who was kidnapped while walking her dog in Mexico, was released by her captors Friday night, the FBI announced in a statement over the weekend.
“She will be reunited with her family and dog,” the FBI noted of her return to the United States, which was in progress at the time of the announcement late Saturday afternoon.
In November, de Leon Barba was kidnapped in Tepatitlán, Jalisco, a state ravaged by cartel violence. Just last week, 10 people were injured and three law enforcement agents were killed in an explosive attack in Guadalajara, the capital of Jaliso, in an event that Enrique Alfaro, the governor of the state, called “sin precedentes” – without precedent – and “that manifests what these organized crime groups are capable of.”
The U.S. Department of Justice considers the headquartered cartel there, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación or CJNG to be “one of the five most dangerous transnational organizations in the world,” holding it responsible for “violence and significant loss of life in Mexico,” along with the trafficking of “many tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl-laced heroin into the United States,” according to a release by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2019.
Kidnappings have also become all too common in the area. So far this month, at least three current and former Mexican journalists have been kidnapped in Jalisco’s neighboring state of Nayarit. Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez, a staff reporter for the national newspaper La Jornada, was found mutilated and with handwritten notes on his body– a common messaging system used by cartels. Journalist Jonathan Lora Ramírez was also briefly kidnapped in the same area but found alive earlier this month.
And Osiris Maldonado, a teacher who previously worked as a journalist, has been missing since July 3.
In 2022 WOLA, the Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas, noted that 100,000 people were “disappeared and missing” in Mexico since such missing person records were first tracked. And the numbers keep mounting. Each year about 21,000 children are kidnapped for sexual exploitation in the country, according to a 2022 report on human rights practices in Mexico by the U.S. Department of State. Americans missing in Mexico are much more likely to turn back up.
Months after de Leon Barba’s disappearance, the FBI first acknowledged its investigation into her capture in April, when the bureau offered $40,000 for tips leading to her recovery and released two surveillance videos of her kidnapping– the footage blurry and partially obscured.
In one video, de Leon Barba is seen walking her dog on the sidewalk. Later she is forced by several people into a gray Volkswagen Jetta, the FBI said, noting that three vehicles were involved in her kidnapping, according to footage they pieced together. Another video depicts her dog running loose toward the street. The FBI said that a family member had found the dog and had been caring for it in de Leon Barba’s absence.
The FBI have noted five suspects in nondescript clothing, identified from the video footage of the kidnapping, but no arrests have been made, the FBI said over the weekend, adding: “an investigation into the identity of her captors remains ongoing.”
“Our relief and joy at the safe return of Monica is profound,” Robert K. Tripp, the special agent in charge of her case, said in a statement Saturday. “The FBI investigation is far from over, but we can now work this case knowing an innocent victim is reunited with her family.”
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