California teen, 18, is MURDERED during vacation to Mexico 'after he tried to stop his friend being beaten by gang as they left a party'
An 18-year-old from California who traveled from San Diego to Mexico was killed while trying to defend his best friend from a gang after they left a house party.
Jonathan Valenzuela, 18, was stabbed to death on July 4 after he and his friend, Kevin Hernández, were attacked and beaten in the middle a street near a military in Tecate, Baja California.
Cellphone video, filmed at the scene, shows a young man slamming Valenzuela to the ground and repeatedly punching him.
Another man, identified as Junior Ortiz by local media, stepped forward moments later and stabbed Valenzuela at least four times.
Jonathan Valenzuela's July 3 trip to Tecate, Mexico, ended in tragedy when he was beaten and stabbed dead after leaving a party. His California parents have provided the identities of the six male suspects who allegedly attacked their 13-year-old son, including the individual who stabbed him at least four times, but no arrests have been made
Still image from a cellphone video shows one of the six alleged suspects beating a defenseless Jonathan Valenzuela
'The moment my son defended Kevin, they separated him and began to beat Kevin on a separate side from Jonathan and Jonathan was surrounded by many more people,' Valenzuela's stepmother mother Aidé Ramos told DailyMail.com in a phone interview Tuesday.
'They were at least nine to 11 people who were helping the aggressor so that other youngsters didn't approach.'
Ramos said that she received a call from Valenzuela's older sister, Jeslyn Valenzuela, after he had been stabbed and said that they were waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
She received a second call from Jeslyn Valenzuela approximately five minutes telling her Jonathan Valenzuela had died.
Jonathan Valenzuela, of San Diego, was killed July 3 in Tecate, Mexico
The family of U.S. born 13-year-old Jonathan Valenzuela has provided the Baja California Attorney General's Office the photos of the six male suspects who are allegedly responsible for the deadly beating.
The family provided the Baja California Attorney General's Office the video of the deadly beating and photos of each of the six male suspects who are allegedly responsible.
However, Ramos is skeptical of police, prosecutors and judges in a country where homicides of foreigners, including Americans, and Mexican nationals regularly go unsolved.
According to government's crime data system, 168 people have been murdered in the Baja California city of Tecate through the first six months of 2021 in comparison to the same period last year when only 58 homicides were reported.
'None of them have been solved and none of the murderers have been found. So that tells me that the death of my son is going to be one more for Tecate,' Ramos said. 'The agents' investigations don't give me any good answers because apparently they are not doing their jobs or maybe they are bought by the same aggressors, the same murderers. So I don't see that they want to do their job in Tecate.'
'Right now I tell my wife that I cannot return my son's life, but we can put pressure on because I believe that all the children of Mexico have the right to leave and return home alive,' Ramos added.
Baja California prosecutor Enrique Sánchez told the Univision that while they are relying on many of the witnesses who were present when Valenzuela was murdered, the suspects 'may have tried to divert the investigation.'
DailyMail.com reached out to the Baja California Attorney General's Office for comment.