U.S. Med Student Says He Can’t Recall Deadly Kidnapping in Mexico
Mystery is shrouding the case of an Arkansas man who vanished after his medical school graduation in Mexico and was presumed kidnapped after one of his American classmates was found murdered.
Jessy Pacheco was found safe and returned to the U.S. over the weekend. He gave a press conference Sunday that raised as many questions as it answered as he said he had no idea what happened to him.
“I didn’t even know how many days I was gone,” Pacheco told reporters, standing outside a church with his mother in Van Buren.
Pacheco went missing June 15 after visiting a nightclub following his graduation from Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. According to Mexican authorities, a friend he was with, Carlos Alejandro Delgadillo Romero, was then found beaten and shot—and investigators said they thought Pacheco might have been abducted.
Then on Friday came news that Pacheco was alive and on his way back to Arkansas with his mother, Vilma Franco.
What happened in between remains unclear, however. At the press conference, Pacheco declined to answer some questions and said he could not answer others.
Asked what was the last thing he remembered before disappearing, he said, “Just being with my friends and my classmates celebrating my graduation.”
He said he had not spoken with Mexican police but that the FBI was involved.
Speaking through an interpreter, his mother also shed little light on the situation.
“We don’t know who he was with, who had him,” she said. “We don’t know nothing.”
Pacheco said he felt ”blessed” to be back home.
“A lot of people who are in these kind of situations don’t get this opportunity,” he said. “I thank God.”
He said that he had known Romero for “a good while” and had prayed for his family.
“I just want to say that I would have taken his place, you know,” he said. “He didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve it, either.”
No arrests have been made in the case.
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