Josué García, nicknamed ‘El Tortolita,’ got on a bus as he did almost every day. Not to work, not to study: to rob passengers on the Palín-Escuintla route, in Guatemala. That Saturday in March 2022, an armed passenger shot him and he did not get off the vehicle alive.
His mother arrived at the scene before the body was taken away. She did not scream against the gun or against the system. She screamed for her son. “My son got up early to rob buses, as always, but they killed him”, she said among police and cameras. “He didn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t shoot at anyone, he only robbed them”.
Her son, “El Tortolita”, had a criminal record and had previously been arrested for robbery and possession of illicit substances.
But to her he was innocent.