Kidnappers kill Mexican child with acid injection

Kidnappers grabbed a 5-year-old boy from a gritty Mexico City street market, then killed him by injecting acid into his heart — a new low even for Mexico's brutal kidnapping gangs. The boy, Javier Morena, was the oldest son of a poor family that sold fruit at a market in the poor neighborhood of Iztapalapa, proof that the plague of kidnappings for ransom afflicts the working class as well as the wealthy. Javier disappeared while playing at the market on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008 Mexico City authorities said. The boy's family spent days looking for him, finally persuading a local television station to post his picture on the news on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. A taxi driver recognized the boy, and went to the market to find the family. He told them that he had given the boy and a teenager a ride from the market to nearby Mexico state, and that the teenager had told him that the boy was crying because his younger brother had been stolen. The driver dropped the two off a block from the police station, and the teen told him they were meeting the boy's mother there. The family showed the driver a picture of their son, which happened to include the 17-year-old family friend and kidnapper. The driver then confirmed that the teen in the picture had taken the boy. The police raided the 17-year-old's home, and he and his family and two others confessed to having killed the boy before they could ask for a 300,000-peso ($23,000) ransom, Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Mancera said in a statement. Mancera said the assailants injected the boy with acid and buried him on a hill outside the capital. Five suspected kidnappers, including the 17-year-old, are under arrest. It was unclear if the group had carried out other kidnappings.