Paola Andrea Bañuelos Flores, 23, had been missing for four days until her body was found on Thursday morning in a field outside Mexicali, Baja California, more than 20 kilometers away from the place where she got into a DiDi car, early on Monday morning, July 8. Despite the efforts of her family and friends, who quickly mobilized to search for her, the State Prosecutor’s Office confirmed this Friday that Bañuelos Flores was strangled and taken to the point where the discovery was confirmed on Thursday. The alleged attacker, the driver of the car she was last seen getting into, is a 24-year-old man, originally from the State of Sonora, who remained a fugitive and who has turned himself in to the authorities of that entity, on Thursday afternoon in Ciudad Obregón. Moments before entering the Prosecutor’s Office, the young man assured in front of a local reporter’s camera that he had left Mexicali out of fear.
The place where Paola Andrea Bañuelos Flores, a psychology student at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC), was found is a chain of semi-arid and extensive lands on the outskirts of the city of Mexicali. Long stretches of land where few people pass by, just over 25 kilometers from the bar La Consentida, where the young woman had spent part of last Sunday night and early Monday morning, in the company of friends and one of her cousins.
During the early hours of Thursday, and moments before the same search team that had been formed almost immediately after her disappearance found the body, Bañuelos’ mother asked for help and said she was confident that her daughter would be found: “We are going around these places hoping that she is not here. That my daughter is wandering the streets, lost. This taxi driver, if he has nothing to do with it, let him appear, let him tell us what happened,” she told local reporters who accompanied the family on the tours. Just a few minutes later, the Baja California Prosecutor, María Elena Andrade, gave a press conference in which she confirmed the discovery of Paola’s lifeless body.
The prosecutor then made two requests: the first, to society and the media, which, taking advantage of the fact that the identity of the alleged perpetrator had been displayed along with his personal information and that of his family on social networks, would help to find his whereabouts; and the second, which was addressed to the families: “Definitely, I think that this alerts us parents and as a community that young girls should not travel alone, for any reason and even if they are flatbed vehicles,” she said.
The governor of the State, Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda, went into detail about how she would reinforce work with taxi companies on the platforms to provide greater security to those who use them: “I have instructed the Secretariat of Citizen Security and the Institute of Sustainable Mobility of Baja California to immediately implement a scheme for the exhaustive evaluation and supervision of the profiles of drivers of digital transportation platforms. Although these platforms are responsible for the selection of their staff, as a government we will not be indifferent to this tragedy and we will demand strict controls to ensure the peace of mind of all the people who use these services,” she posted on her X account.
The hours before the disappearance
On Sunday night, Paola Andrea had left her house alone to meet some friends and her cousins for lunch and then dinner at the La Consentida bar — located about 5 kilometers from the center of Mexicali. According to the testimonies of her relatives, she left the establishment shortly after 2:00 a.m. on Monday. A relative of Paola picked her and one of her cousins up, but they did not take her home, but instead left her at a point where she requested a car through the DiDi application, which some witnesses saw her get into and confirmed that it was a black car. From then on, around 2:20 a.m., her cousin stopped having contact with her and they contacted her parents to begin the search.
It was one of Paola’s brothers who looked for the location of his sister’s cell phone and with that they were able to find the mobile, which they found in the hands of a homeless person, and who assured that he had found the device a few blocks away from the point where the young woman got into the car. The local authorities published the image of the driver, 24 years old, originally from Sonora, and in the following hours the family and friends of the woman organized search groups and pressured the authorities to carry out the necessary investigations.
The black car registered on the DiDi car app that Paola drove that morning was found thanks to the car’s GPS, in a place where the authorities did not give details. On Thursday afternoon, and in the face of a massive exposure of his image, his personal data and that of his family, the driver of the car turned himself in to the Attorney General’s Office of his home state, Sonora, in Ciudad Obregón. Upon arriving, accompanied by one of his aunts, he told a local reporter: “I came out of fear, news was spread and they haven’t even let me testify,” he said.
The man, who already had an arrest warrant for domestic violence, said on camera that he did not know what he was being accused of and that he was afraid of all the threats he and his family began to receive. According to his aunt, Lizete Gutiérrez, the young man spoke first with his father, and told them both that he had indeed picked up Paola and that he had finished the trip.
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