Oaxaca, Mexico: Bradley Will, American reporter, shot from above at close range then executed at point blank range 15 minutes later.

Caution: Somewhat disturbing photo below.

Commenter Bill suggests that I get on this. I lost some time this morning visiting the Zócalo and noting a marked increase in tension amongst the PFP offficers. I'll post about that later along with the reason and include some photos.

Ok, let's try to clear up some mis-information. Bradley Will's body was never delivered to the Mexican Red Cross as had been reported earlier. A "human rights group" had claimed to have autopsied his body but that, apparently, never occurred. His body was abandoned in the back of a pickup left outside the amphitheater of the State Attorney General.

According to Lizbeth Caña, the Oaxaca State Attorney General, and 2 reporters from Reforma, Daniel Pensamiento y Virgilio Sánchez, it is now believed that Bradley Will was shot first by someone standing very close and slightly above him, and then shot a second time, while still alive, at point-blank range some 15-20 minutes later. Both bullets were 9mm.

The Attorney General and ballistics experts presented their evidence in a press conference last night while Mark in Mexico fiddled, I guess.

Ms. Caña said that in the film taken by Bradley Will at the moment he was shot, one can clearly hear the shooter say, "qué no te dije wey, que no estés tomando fotos" ("I told you not to, 'wey'," -- possibly 'buey', or ox, a common insult here -- "that you are not to be taking photos"). Then you can clearly hear the possible shooter jack a cartridge into his pistol. Then the gunshot, from very close by. Then Bradley Will cries out and the camera falls to the ground. To demonstrate, Ms. Caña played the video for the assembled reporters and a forensic expert pulled a 9mm pistol and repeatedly worked the action so reporters could compare the sounds.

Here is the last film taken by Bradley Will. I don't have the forensic tools at the disposal of the Oaxaca State Attorney General. I can hear someone speaking to Bradley Will but I cannot make out what is being said. At 42 seconds into the video, I can hear the sound of a cartridge being jacked into the pistol. I can easily hear the gunshot, seemingly from very close range. There is, in fact, a masked man in a white undershirt who moves out of camera range just prior hearing someone say something. Was he the shooter?



Ms. Caña says that the first bullet entered Will's body from the left and from above him. That would mean, she surmises, that the shooter was standing on the sidewalk while Will was in the street. Then, forensic pathologists were able to determine that, some 15-20 minutes later, while Bradley Will was still alive, he was shot again, this time from point-blank range.

If you examine this admittedly somewhat gruesome photo, you can see that Bradley Will has only one bullet wound.

Bradley Will seconds after he was hit by first bullet.

Bradley Will was carried from the scene and placed in a white VW Beetle. Indy Media has claimed that this was because no ambulance would respond to the call. However, as you can clearly see in my post linked above, APPO attacked and overturned the ambulance which was, indeed, on the scene. What's more, Will's body was transferred, at least once, because it was left at the Attorney General's headquarters in a different vehicle.

Indy Media says that his body was taken to a Red Cross "station". Attorney General Caña says that the body never arrived at a hospital.

Indy Media says that Will lived for nearly an hour after the shooting, but because the car which was carrying him "ran out of gas" and "unsuccessfully tried to wave down a couple of trucks", he died "five blocks from a Red Cross station." This may or may not be true.

Indy Media, however inadvertantly, pretty much supports the Attorney General's thesis about Will's murder:

"Other people have wondered how Brad, who seemed to be standing behind many people when he was shot, could have been hit by not one, but two bullets."

Well now maybe we know. Attorney General Caña theorises that the second bullet was fired into Brad Will while he was still alive, "as a result of some action or conspiracy to internationalize the conflict in Oaxaca."

She said that she stood ready to have her autopsy report reviewed by the Federal Attorney General as well as "anyone else who wants to." She also stated that other witnesses, some of whom were carrying firearms, have been identified and are being questioned.

She also said that the town officials shown in photos, whom the bleeding hearts are all calling "paramilitaries", were still subject to legal proceedings and it had been proven that they fired weapons that day.

Here's a thought. If those guys managed to ditch their weapons so that ballistics couldn't trace the slugs removed from Bradley Will's body to their weapons, and it now turns out that none of their bullets hit Will, they may have been too cautious for their own good. I would imagine that they are frantically searching for those disappeared weapons right about now. Attorney General Caña did not mention any ballistics tests being performed on any confiscated weapons. That may mean that the Attorney General does not yet have those weapons.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, Bradley Will, executed by friends