XALTIANGUIS , Mexico, Aug. 10 (UPI) — The body of Miguel Ángel Jiménez Blanco, a community organizer and key figure in the search of the 43 missing students in Mexico, was found with a gunshot wound to the head.
Jiménez Blanco’s body was discovered Saturday night inside a taxi he owned with two gunshot wounds in the town of Xaltianguis in Mexico’s Guerrero state, known as the country’s most violent. No suspects have been identified.
He recently began driving a taxi to make ends meet.
Jiménez Blanco previously organized a group called “The Other Disappeared” of mostly women who meet every Sunday to search for the remains of deceased loved ones. Since October, more than 129 bodies have been found and handed over to authorities for identification.
There are more than 20,000 people missing across Mexico.
In September 2014, 43 students traveled to the town of Iguala in Mexico’s Guerrero and clashed with police, who opened fire. Police then handed the students over to drug gangs. Soldiers were at the scene of the clash and relatives of the missing students believe the soldiers played a role in the disappearances by failing to act.
Jiménez Blanco led efforts to conduct searches after the disappearance of the students.
Further investigation into the incident revealed that the police was infiltrated by drug gangs. The three suspects in the case, Patricio Reyes, Jhonatan Osorio and Agustin Garcia, confessed to killing the students and burning the bodies, alleging they were told the students were rival drug gang members.
Only one burnt body of the 43 missing student has been identified.
Jiménez Blanco also organized 102 women to form a defensive paramilitary group to patrol the streets of Xaltianguis because citizens felt officials were not doing enough.
His efforts within the community to improve security saw some success, but he felt the security situation was deteriorating once more.
“We left it clean and now again there are bad people here, but we must do something, because I can not leave this to my children,”Jiménez Blanco said last week in an interview with CNNMéxico. “If something happens to one of my children, I will never forgive myself.”
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.