Canadian lynched in Amazon after being accused of killing 81-year-old Peruvian healer
Police found the 41-year-old man’s body after a video recording of lynching was shared on social media
A Canadian man was lynched in the Peruvian Amazon after residents of a remote village accused him of killing an 81-year-old medicine woman a day earlier, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office said on Sunday.
Olivia Arevalo Lomas, a traditional healer of the Shipibo-Conibo tribe, was shot twice and dead on Thursday near her home in the Amazonian region of Ucayali, said lead prosecutor Ricardo Palma Jimenez.
Sebastian Paul Woodroffe, a 41-year-old Canadian citizen who lived in the region, was blamed by some villagers for Arevalo Lomas’ murder and he was believed to have been one of her clients, said Jimenez.
Police found Woodroffe’s body buried about 1km (0.6 mile) from Arevalo Lomas’ home in Ucayali on Saturday, after a cellphone video recording of the Friday lynching was shared on social media, Jimenez added.
The video shows a man groaning in a puddle near a thatched-roof structure as another man puts a rope around his neck and drags him with others looking on.
Jimenez said prosecutors were exploring several hypotheses related to Arevalo Lomas’ murder and that it was too early to name suspects in the case. No arrests had been made yet related to Woodroffe’s death, he said.