He may be the 13th. Senator, but Osmany Salas is the first civilian we know of to almost singlehandedly break up a human trafficking abduction - and he did so without involving any Belizean law enforcement authority.
Salas today posted the account on Facebook. Using fictitious names, he explains that the mother of a teenaged girl from Orange Walk called him on Tuesday night to say that her daughter had run away from home. The mother later found out that her daughter had crossed the border at Botes along with other girls led by a male escort. The mother's story is that an unidentified woman met her daughter at home and lured her on a bus to Santa Cruz village - which is the jump off point to Botes, Mexico. A man joined them along the way and paid the bus fares for a whole group of girls. They went across to Mexico, and that's when the mother called on Salas.
The break for the family came early yesterday morning when the girl called a family member - and they agreed to pick her up in Chetumal. That's when Salas, through the Belize embassy in Mexico, called on Chetumal police. They set up an operation with plainclothes and uniformed police officers, along with one unmarked car and three regular police cars.
When Salas and the family met the girl, the Mexican police swooped in and took her into safe custody.
She has returned home and reports that she had already been offered a "waitress" job in Chetumal with a promise that she would also "work" in Cancun on weekends. The Mexican Police Commander told the family that had they arrived an hour later, she would have been lost.
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