Hero cops have saved a nine-year-old boy from a terrifying kidnap gang who snatched him as his mother walked him to school and then demanded GBP 177,000.
Horrifying CCTV footage of the snatch shows the mum and her son walking on a pavement in Huehuetoca, Mexico State, south-central Mexico on 10th October.
The pair are seen holding hands when a car pulls up and two men get out of the back.
One lifts the helpless lad off the ground and bundles him into the vehicle while the other threatens his mother with a handgun.
As the car speeds off, the desperate mother can do nothing but run after it in vain.
But her anguish finally came to an end when Mexican police managed to free the boy from a nearby building 48 hours later.
Officers made seven arrests at the scene, one of them an unnamed teenage girl.
The other six suspects – four men and two women – were named as Moises Alexander, Erick Mateo, Omar Avelardo, Leonel Eduardo, Glenda, and Lucila Guadalupe.
Their surnames were withheld due to strict local privacy laws.
Some of the suspects are believed to have carried out the snatch, while others are thought to have masterminded it.
Police were led to the group after it had demanded a ransom payment of MXN 4 million (GBP 177,000) for the schoolboy’s release.
Public security official Ricardo Mejia told local media the suspects belong to a criminal gang operating in Mexico State.
The investigation is ongoing.
