1 lynched in Panajachel; 3 rescued by chopper

One man was lynched Saturday in Panajachel and three women in danger of being lynched were rescued by police helicopter from the normally tranquil tourist town of Panajachel beside beautiful Lake Atitlán.

The accused thief, Wálter González García, 30, allegedly stole about $850 from a vendor of traditional woven fabrics (such as this woman here), and was beaten to death in front of the municipal building by angry townspeople, according to the Prensa Libre, Guatemala’s most respected national newspaper.

They allegedly seized him after he robbed one vendor and later attempted to steal from another, according to Sololatecos.com, an online news source from Sololá.

The lynching echoed the prior week’s vigilantism in Sololá, which left three accused killers dead in the town market hours after a bus driver and a passenger were murdered.

The Panajachel crowd forced González to his hotel room, where he had stashed the stolen cash, Sololatecos.com reported. Upon seeing this evidence, the crowd proceeded to administer its own form of one-strike-you’re-out justice.

Police arrested three women, aged 32, 38 and 42, who were his alleged accomplices and placed them in jail.

Townspeople demanded the police turn over the women, but after about an hour-long confrontation, the police spirited them out the back, driving up a steep, winding road to Sololá, where the jail presumably must be safer (except for last week). But townspeople of San Jorge, just below Sololá, had blocked the road.

The crowd took possession of the women and marched them back down the hill to Panajachel, a descent of perhaps 1,000 feet elevation. They doused the women with gasoline and prepared to burn them.

Police managed to disperse the crowd and rescue the women, flying them to safety in a helicopter. Townspeople, however, managed to torch four police vehicles.

At least three men were lynched in Huehuetenango the past weekend, and a man in another rural town. The uptick in vigilantism — more than 40 this year — left some government officials preoccupied.

This (Spanish-language) Noticiero Departmental video report from (Sololatecos.com) shows the day's events in Pana.