Oaxaca, Mexico: Bradley Will murder investigation heats up - a bit

After the Amnesty International call for the Mexican government to insert itself into the ongoing investigation into the murder of American reporter Bradley Will, the federal government has responded. Federal Attorney General (PGR) Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said that his office will "review the handling" of the entire investigation. He said that it is not the role of the PGR under Mexican law to audit local authorities. If his office determines that a federal crime has been committed, then the PGR would be authorized to enter into the investigation. Presumably, "federal crime" would include a coverup or the faking of evidence by local authorities.

He further stated that the PGR could also enter the investigation if specifically requested to do so by local Oaxaca Attorney General Lizbeth Caña. She has stated that the autopsy and forensics reports are available to the PGR if it wants them.

So what we have here is a dance. She says the PGR can play. The PGR says she has to ask it to play. Sheesh.

Here are two of the photos released by the Oaxaca Attorney General to the press last week. I thought I had already posted these but find that I have not. Commenter gcblues from Costa Rica helped point out that oversight. I had sent the photos to Sarah Ferguson at The Village Voice but they never made it onto these pages (nor the pages of The Village Voice, I might add).

First, a picture from the ballistics study comparing the two slugs dug out of Will's body. You can clearly see some similarities but there are also some dissimilarities as well. Were the two bullets fired from the same weapon as Lizbeth Caña claims? I dunno.



Ballistics photo


This is a photo from the autopsy report. It clearly shows the powder burns at the site of the second bullet's entry point on Will's right side. This is where the Attorney General developed her "1-3 meters" theory which got turned into "point blank" by reporters. It looks rather point blank to me. In addition, the angle of the first bullet which hit him in the solar plexis would, according to Caña, have to have been fired from no more than 3 meters away. At the distance of 30 meters, where the town officials are shown firing at the APPO barricade, a shooter would have to have been at a height of 14 feet for the bullet to have entered Will's body at such an angle. And there were no rooftop shooters.



Autopsy photo

And remember that Will's last video is also a part of this. The Attorney general, as well as reporters who attended her press conference last week, say they can clearly hear the threat made against him by someone standing very close for Will's filming of the shooting. Then, even I could clearly hear the jacking of a cartridge into a pistol followed immediately thereafter by a gunshot, also very close to Will's camera's recorder.

Here, once again, is the video.



Bradley Will's last video

Attorney General Caña says that her forensics technicians also analyzed the sound recording made by Will's camera. She says that the the gunshot that apparently first hit Will can clearly be determined to have been much closer than the shots being fired by the town officials who attacked the barricade. I have listened quite closely to the recording while viewing Will's last video and I cannot detect a big difference in the sound of one gunshot versus another's. There is, however, one blast that takes place early in the video that sounds like it was right in Will's ear. That blast caused him to take cover between the wheels of a truck.

Then there is the testimony of a doctor who says he just happened to be in the middle of all this. He said he gave first aid to Will and then accompanied the wounded man all the way to a Red Cross station. He says that Will died en route and the doctor only saw one bullet wound. But the videos and still photos taken by other camermen which recorded the first aid as well as the transport of Will to a white VW Beetle do not show this doctor ever being involved.

And a commenter to one of my previous posts, at whom I snapped at quite petulantly, says she was hosting a group of nurses visiting from California on some type of exchange program. She said that one of the girls told her that she was present at the Red Cross station when Will arrived and she watched him die there.

So, who shot Bradley Will?

• And who murdered Bradley Will, since it may or may not have been the same person or the same weapon?
• Did an APPO gunman shoot him at close range?
• Was he then executed by the same APPO gunman, or a different APPO gunman using the same weapon, or by two different weapons?
• Have the ballistics reports and autopsy reports been engineered to make it appear that APPO executed Bradley Will?
• Did a government gunman fire the second bullet into Will long after his death to make it appear he had been executed?
• Why does a doctor say he treated Bradley Will when photos and videos don't show him to have even been on the scene?
• Why does a nursing student say she saw him die at a Red Cross station when the doctor, who may or may not have been there at all, and the Red Cross paramedics say he was DOA?
• Why was Bradley Will removed from the shooting scene in one vehicle and arrived at the Red Cross station in a different vehicle?
• Why do some people claim that the VW ran out of gas but the doctor who claims to have accompanied Will all the way to the Red Cross station does not mention any transfer from one vehicle to another?
• Why, if Will even arrived at the Red Cross station, which is still in some dispute, did the personnel there release his body to unknown persons who later abandoned it when medical personnel are required to wait for the authorities to arrive to take it away?
• Why did Will's family allow the body to be cremated when the autopsy report is still in such doubt?
• Why was Bradley Will sent here by Indy Media to do on the scene reporting when he entered the country posing as a tourist?

I cannot definitively answer even one of those questions for you. If you want answers then you pays your money and you takes your chances.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, Bradley Will, American reporter killed, APPO