Mayor lies in coffin and pretends to be Covid-19 victim to avoid arrest after breaking lockdown to go drinking
The Mayor of a small town in Peru exhibited shocking behavior when he pretended to be dead after being caught by authorities violating coronavirus lockdown rules. Jamie Rolando Urbina Torres had been out drinking with friends and was violating the lockdown orders. Officers found Torres lying in an open casket while sporting a face mask when they came to arrest him on Monday night in Tantara, Daily Mail reports.
The authorities revealed that he had violated curfew and social distancing laws to drink alcohol with his friends and was drunk at the time that he was arrested. The mayor has been accused of not taking the threat of coronavirus seriously. He has also been called out for failing to implement safety measures across town. Peru was officially placed into lockdown around 66 days by the central government. According to outraged locals, Torres spent only 8 days in the town ever since the lockdown was implemented.
He also did not put any safety measures into place. On May 9, Torres was forced to show up to a town meeting where he had to defend himself. He instead unleashed a series of angry rants against the locals. Local media revealed how he was shot down by his own officials when he gave excuses for his negligence in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. He was also accused of failing to put any measures and safety checks to make sure people from outside town cant enter it.
As per data from the Johns Hopkins University, Peru has seen around 104,020 confirmed cases of coronavirus so far as of May 21. There have been around 3,024 deaths due to the COVID-19 virus. Peru is having a very difficult time dealing with the coronavirus crisis. Hospitals across the city had started to run out of oxygen and the shortage led to the black market price skyrocketing to around ell above $1,000 (£810). As reported by the Guardian, a municipal worker, Sangama said that his eldest sister Edith had died due to the lack of oxygen tanks. "Her body could not hold on. She needed oxygen but we just couldn’t afford it."
"I had promised her: ‘Don’t worry sister, today I will find you a cylinder,’… but in the end, there was nothing I could do. My sister died just a few hours ago, we are trying to find the way to give her a Christian burial," he added. The executive director of the regional health office in Loreto, Graciela Meza said, "We are living in a catastrophe. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, or even in my dreams Most victims have died from a lack of oxygen; 90% have died because of lack of medical supplies."
Meza also shared that the city's hospitals have been overflowing with patients and there is almost five times the number of patients than the 180 beds could hold. Confirmed coronavirus cases across the globe have reached 5,011,467, as per the Johns Hopkins University tracker. There have been around 328,368 deaths worldwide with the numbers rising every day.