A 14-year-old boy has been arrested for the drive-by shootings of eight people in a suburb of Mexico City, according to Mexico’s Public Safety Department.
Police allege the teenager and another man dubbed “El Ñoño” rode up on motorcycles to a house party and unleashed a hail of bullets.
A photo taken by Mexican media of the crime scene showed scattered chairs and a trampoline on the lawn with balloons and decorations set up.
Police say the slayings were related to drug cartel activity.
The motive in the killings has not been made public, but drug gangs in Mexico frequently dabble in kidnapping and contract killing.
In 2010, soldiers detained a 14-year-old boy nicknamed “El Ponchis” who claimed he was kidnapped at age 11 and forced to work for the Cartel of the South Pacific, a branch of the splintered Beltran Leyva gang.
A 2021 study from the Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico estimated that there are 30,000 children working for cartels as lookouts, street-level dealers and sicarios.