MEXICO CITY — A former prosecutor and local police official was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the scare the beheading of a mayor on October 6.

Officials in the southern state of Guerrero have confirmed that Germán Reyes has been arrested on homicide charges for killing Alejandro Arcos just a week after he took office as mayor of the state capital, Chilpancingo.

The arrest was shocking because officials blamed the killing on a local drug and extortion ring, and Reyes was previously employed as a special prosecutor for the state of Guerrero, a high-level position.

The implication was that Reyes — who was also a former military officer who, according to his official resume, retired with the rank of captain in the military justice system — was somehow working in collaboration with the gang.

That would suggest that at least one of the two gangs at war the struggle for control of Chilpancingo controls, intimidates, or works with officials there.

If Reyes is convicted, it would also be a stinging rebuke to a the policy adopted by the cities of Mexico to hire retired military officers for top local police positions, assuming they are less prone to corruption.

It was also telling that state detectives had to rely on federal forces — troopers and the National Guard — to make the arrest, suggesting they may not have trusted state and local police who would normally perform such tasks.

It was unclear what title Reyes held in the Chilpancingo municipal security force or whether he served both under Arcos or the replacement mayor who took over after he was killed.

Mexico’s top federal security official, Omar García Harfuch, said earlier Tuesday that Arcos — the mayor whose body was found in a pickup truck with his severed head resting on the roof of the vehicle — was apparently killed by the same gang responsible for the killing of 11 market vendors, including four boys, last week.

The vendors, members of an extended family, were kidnapped in late October while traveling to sell their wares. Their bodies were found dumped in the bed of a pickup truck on a boulevard in Chilpancingo last week.

Although neither Harfuch nor state prosecutors named the gang, a local human rights activist said the Ardillos were responsible for killing market vendors.

The activist, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said the Ardillos gang controlled large parts of the state and had state congressmen and other officials working for them.

The Ardillos have been locked in a years-long battle for control of Chilpancingo with a rival gang, the Tlacos. That battle on the ground left mutilated corpses scattered around the city in recent years.

Chilpancingo, a city of about 300,000, is so completely dominated by gangs that in 2023 one of them staged a demonstration with hundreds of people, hijacked a government armored car, blocked a major highway and took the police hostage to obtain the release of the arrested suspects.

Violence in Guerrero has reached such unprecedented levels that earlier this year Roman Catholic bishops announced that he had helped arrange a truce in another part of the state between two warring drug cartels.

At the time, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who refused to confront the gangs — said he approved of such talks.

“Priests, pastors and members of all churches participated, who helped to pacify the country. I think it’s very good,” said López Obrador, who left office on September 30.

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