El Salvador president says missing teen found, daughter of woman killed by police

SAN SALVADOR — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said Wednesday that a missing teenager has been found, identifying her as the daughter of Victoria Salazar, who died in Mexico after a Mexican female police officer was seen in a video kneeling on her back.

The attorney general’s office of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, where Salazar died, said Tuesday night that an amber alert had been issued for her daughter, 16-year-old Francela Yaritza Salazar Arriaza. Francela was last seen in the Caribbean tourist resort of Tulum, where her mother was killed.

“The oldest daughter of Victoria has been found. She is now in the custody of FGE,” Bukele tweeted, referring to the state attorney general’s office. “She is physically well.”

Quintana Roo’s attorney general’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.

Salazar’s partner was arrested on Tuesday for abuse of her and her daughters, Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquin said.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador this week said Salazar, 36, had been subject to “brutal treatment and murdered” after her detention on Saturday by four police officers. An autopsy showed Salazar’s neck had been broken.

Her death had echoes of the case of George Floyd, an African-American man who died in May 2020 as a Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck. It sparked outrage on social media and calls by El Salvador’s president for the officers to be punished.

“They used excessive force,” her mother, Rosibel Arriaza, told Mexican television network TV Azteca. She noted that her daughter’s death was similar to that of George Floyd.

Newly-released surveillance camera video, published by Mexican newspaper Reforma, showed Salazar looking frightened and holding on to workers in a convenience store just before police arrived at the scene, apparently in the run-up to her death.

The Quintana Roo attorney general’s office has opened a homicide investigation into her death, which has led to the arrest of the four officers seen on videos of the incident.