The parents of soccer player Luis Díaz were kidnapped this Saturday in Barracas, a town in La Guajira, a Colombian region next to the Caribbean Sea. The couple was at a gas station when armed men approached them and took them away, according to authorities. President Gustavo Petro reported, half an hour later, that the mother had been released and that the search for the father continued.
The ‘lock plan’ developed by @PoliciaColombia allowed the rescue of the mother of soccer player Luis Díaz, Mrs. Cilenis Marulanda, who was found by our uniformed officers thanks to an effective and forceful institutional deployment. pic.twitter.com/WQL0lzkPwH
— General William René Salamanca Ramírez (@DirectorPolicia) October 28, 2023
The country’s police chief, William René Salamanca, published a video on social networks in which he attempted to speak with the mother, Cilenis Marulanda. “Let’s insist on the search for the father, we already have the mother safe and sound. Her integrity and her health are without any problem,” Salamanca is heard saying, who has announced that he is traveling to the place to personally take care of the investigation. Petro explained that Marulanda had been rescued thanks to the road closure that the authorities had made after hearing the news.
The police feared that something like this could happen to the family of the star player of the Colombian soccer team. A year and a half ago, he asked Luis Manuel Díaz, his father, not to visit a coffee farm he had in the mountains for fear that some local mafia would kidnap him. Díaz, as he told this newspaper, did not sleep in the same place every night and was alert in case someone followed him when he drove through the area. His son, who plays for Liverpool, faces Nottingham Forest this Sunday at nine in the morning, Colombia time.
The Attorney General’s Office communicated through social networks: “From the moment the Prosecutor’s Office General of the Nation learned of the kidnapping of the parents of the Colombian player Luis Díaz, in the Barrancas sector, in La Guajiraa specialized team of prosecutors, officials of the Technical Investigation Corps, CTIand investigators from the Gaula Police and Military are in urgent action in order to find the location of these people, clarify the facts and find those responsible.”
In a padlock operation in Barrancas, Luis Diaz’s mother has been rescued, we continue the search for the father
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) October 28, 2023
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Luis Díaz played for Junior de Barranquilla until Porto signed him in 2019. In Portugal he exploded in just two years and Liverpool bought him for 45 million euros. With the national team he played a great role in the 2019 Copa América, in which Colombia finished third. He scored four goals in five games. He is now trying to regain fitness after being sidelined for six months with a knee injury.
(News in development)
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