Mother arrested in Mexico for gouging her 5-year-old son’s eyes out

July 31, 2016

By Talia Ralph

Yolanda Salazar during one of the rituals to the Santa Muerte (Saint of Death) in the sanctuary placed at her home in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico on October 31, 2010.
AFP

Police arrested a mother in Mexico on Thursday for allegedly gouging her son's eyes out in what appeared to be a drug-fueled ritual, authorities said.

Investigators believed the mother, 28-year-old Maria del Carmen Rios Garcia, pulled the 5-year-old boy's eyes out with her fingers and a spoon after he refused to close them during a ceremony, the local affiliate of BNO News reported.

The boy's father was reportedly not in the home at the time, according to the Associated Press.

A total of eight people from Nezahualcoyotl, a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, have been arrested in connection with the incident, Mexico state prosecutor Isaac Acevedo told local media, the AP reported.

One of the men arrested had ran to get help, and officers found the mutilated boy in his home on Thursday morning before rushing him to a hospital for treatment, Reuters reported. He is currently in a stable but serious condition at the Children's Hospital in Mexico City, according to BNO.

Responding police officers found several family members when they entered the residence, the state's Citizen Security Ministry chief Salvador Neme told reporters, BNO News reported. The relatives allegedly told police they were going to kill the boy to "cast the demon out" and "avoid an earthquake to save this earthly world," according to BNO.

The adults involved in the incident have not yet been charged, but are being detained pending an investigation, the Associated Press reported.

Rituals in Mexico have turned violent in the past, with the most extreme case being the horrific "narco-satanicos" killings of the 1980s, the AP reported. Fifteen bodies, many of them with signs of ritual sacrifice, were found buried at a ranch outside the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, according to the AP.