Mexican police officers shot and killed a student from a rural teachers college on Thursday night in the western party of the country. The episode comes at a moment of increased tension between the government and students at the college, which is linked to one of the worst atrocities in Mexico’s recent history.
The shooting on Thursday unfolded in the state of Guerrero after state police officers tried to stop a white pickup truck that had been reported stolen and were met by gunfire, according to state authorities.
The authorities said that in the ensuing shootout, one person in the vehicle, Yanqui Kothan Gómez Peralta, 23, was shot in the head by the police and later died in a hospital. A second person in the truck was arrested, and a firearm and drugs were found in the vehicle, the police said.
The Guerrero state secretary general, Ludwig Reynoso, told reporters after the shooting that Mr. Gómez Peralta was a student at the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos — a teachers college in a rural area of Guerrero with a history of activism and social protest.
In 2014, a group of 43 students from the school were attacked by gunmen, including local police officers whose commanders had been taking direct orders from local drug traffickers — as shown by a trove of text messages, witness testimonies and investigative files.
The students were abducted and never seen again. A decade later, the remains of only three bodies have been officially identified.
