By Marti Quintana.

Teotihuacan, Mexico, May 26 (EFE).– Lack of trust in the authorities, a perception of abandonment and a fired-up sense of community led hundreds of residents of a central Mexican town to lynch two suspected kidnappers.

All was apparently quiet on Wednesday in the central square of Atlatongo, a town of 5,000 in the central state of Mexico where the day before some 600 people beat a man and a woman to death and seriously injured a third male suspected criminal.

The mob accused the three of kidnapping a youth named Ezequiel Flores, who was found alive Wednesday morning in good condition.

Flores told authorities that a fourth kidnapper had abandoned him on a road and identified the other three suspects to prosecutors.

On Tuesday, when bells started ringing at the church across the street from the tree-lined plaza and the children’s playground, people came out as on previous occasions: it is the signal that alerts the town to an imminent danger.

“Some kidnappers were caught, and the people are united,” Artemio Valencia, a resident of the community who makes a living from farming and local trade, told EFE. “They didn’t know who they were messing with. It happened once, and let’s hope it doesn’t happen again, because we’ll do the same.”

Two hours after the bells rang in this town, hundreds of law enforcement agents arrived via the road that takes tourists to the Teotihuacan pyramids, according to Jose Manzur, the state interior secretary.

It was too late.

Octavio Ramirez, 31, a native of the southern state of Guerrero, and Nallely Perez, from a different town in the state of Mexico, were already close to death.

The man perished at the gazebo where he was pummeled, and the woman died as she was being taken to the hospital.

Police used tear gas to disperse the mob and reach the suspected kidnappers. The third man had been taken by several local residents to a home where Flores was supposedly being held, but when they did not find the victim they handed the suspect over to the police.

Eighteen local residents were questioned about the lynching but later released for lack of evidence. State prosecutors are continuing to investigate to determine who was responsible.

Valencia told EFE that if the police had arrested the suspects they would have released them right away to “keep receiving money.”

According to a study by the Mexico City-based Metropolitan Autonomous University, a total of 160 lynchings occurred in Mexico between 2010 and 2014. EFE