MEXICO CITY (KRT) — Mexican authorities found a stolen truck Thursday carrying deadly cyanide whose disappearance had sparked heightened security along the U.S. border for fear that it could be used in a terrorist attack, officials said. Some of the cyanide was missing.
The truck, stolen at gunpoint May 10 in the central state of Hidalgo, was found about 75 miles away in Zacatlan, Puebla.
Police, soldiers and environmental officials were sent to the town, 120 miles north of Mexico City. Puebla state officials issued a maximum health alert because some of the 10 tons of sodium cyanide, the same material used in gas-chamber executions, was missing.
The powdery chemical, which is also used in mining operations, was transported in steel drums.
“It looks like several tons of the material is missing,” said Puebla Police Chief Manuel Mendez Marin. “Someone may have carried some of the material away without knowing just how dangerous it is.”
Mendez said that it appears the robbers did not know exactly what they were stealing, but that only an investigation could determine that for sure.
“We have no evidence to indicate that this material was going to be used in an attack, but we have not ruled anything out either,” he said.
Cargo truck robberies in central Mexico are common, and sometimes the perpetrators don’t know what they are going to get, Mendez said.
“Sometimes they get shoes, sometimes they get clothes, sometimes they get something they didn’t expect,” he said. “In this case, it’s likely that they confused the material for something else and abandoned the truck when they figured it out. If they had wanted this material, they would have stolen all of it and not left some behind.”
Mendez said the truck was not marked in any way to indicate that it was carrying dangerous chemicals.
A Mexico City newspaper, El Universal, posted a story on its Web page saying that only 13 of the 96 steel drums of cyanide were found on Thursday. Army soldiers and chemical experts were sent to the region to try to prevent a potential environmental and human disaster, the newspaper reported.