December 12, 2011, Eduardo González Rodríguez, 17 years old, was detained by the municipal police of Ahome and accused of selling illegal drugs.

The commander of the force, Jesús Carrasco Ruiz, was also the coordinator of the judicial police in the northern region of the state. The decision was made to transport Eduardo to Culiacán, but before doing so he was tortured, leaving his body swollen and covered in bruises.

“I fought to find out what was happening with my son, until three days later I found him in Culiacán, really battered, tortured beyond belief. He even had to see a psychologist, and a doctor, because he couldn’t move his arm,” says Reyna Isabel Rodríguez Peñuelas.

The police beat him with paddles, they poured water on him and shocked him with electric wires, they made him soil himself from the pain, until a journalist stopped them.

“She was there, and she heard the screams, and when she opened the door of the station she realized what was happening and told to stop, and if she hadn’t they would have killed him,” she says.

They changed his clothes and took him to Culiacán, where the beating continued. Then he was presented in a press conference as one of the leaders of the “Los Mazatlecos” criminal group, which according to the United States Treasury Department is the second most important producer and trafficker of methamphetamine to the country.

“His bottom was practically black, he had been beaten so much, even once they got him to Culiacán, and a judicial police officer threatened that he had to sign whatever statement they gave him,” Eduardo’s mother says.

Eduardo stayed in Culiacán, in the Juvenile Detention Facility, where he spent a year before being transferred to the prison in Los Mochis, where he was jailed another two years and nine months, before being released on good conduct.

He then went to Guasave, and began dealing drugs again, even though his release had been conditional.

On February 9, 2016, he was arrested again, this time in Juan José Ríos, while driving with his sister-in-law Zumiko Lizbeth Félix Ortega. According to witnesses, Joel Medina Gastélum was involved in the arrest.

But Eduardo and Zumiko did not appear in a jail, and since that day both are disappeared.

“As time goes on, I’ve lost the hope of seeing my son, and sometimes I say that I want to die and that I’ll never find him, though sometimes I also get my hopes up because I see that my compañeras are finding their children,” Reyna says.

“I’ve always been distrustful of the DNA tests, and if one day they give me a bag of skinny bones, I’m not going to believe it, because I’d want to see him alive again, chubby, the way he was when he was taken.”