The bodies of two men were found in a burned van in Mexico. Photo: Daily Mail/El Debate
A few days ago, a tragic story broke. Two Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, vanished on a road trip from Canada to Mexico. For days, the families desperately struggled to find out what happened to them. Then the unthinkable occurred: a burned out van matching the one Lucas and Coleman were driving was found by Mexican authorities on a dirt road known as “the 25” in Sinaloa, a dangerous, gang-run part of Mexico, home to the infamous Sinaloa Cartel and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Now, the first images of the torched van and the charred human remains inside have been released by Mexican authorities.
The inside of the torched van. The remains have been blurred. Picture: Noroeste.com/Carlos Chaidez
Sinaloa Attorney General Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez confirmed with the Canadian embassy that the van was registered to Coleman, and the family was notified. It was grim news, and the families and friends of the missing men were devastated. While nothing has been confirmed by DNA yet, it seems the families have given up hope that the pair will be found alive. “Our son’s life has left us,” wrote Coleman’s mother on Facebook. “They will be with us forever in our hearts… he has gone on to surf a bigger wave, I’ll always miss you, son.”
While the remains have yet to be formally identified, the families are expecting the worst. Picture: Noroeste.com/Carlos Chaidez
Andrea Gomez, the girlfriend of one of the men, echoed a similar sentiment. “Everything points to it being them because the van matches,” she told The Guardian. Now, the girlfriends of the traveling surfers have decided to finish the trip the men started.
Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, both from Western Australia, had plans to arrive by van in Guadalajara on November 21st. When they never arrived and family didn’t hear from the pair, they were classified as missing people by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The 33-year-old Australians left Edmonton, Canada and made their way to Las Vegas, then continued south down into Mexico. They were supposed to meet Gómez in Guadalajara.
Lucas’s girlfriend Josie Cox wrote on Facebook that she, along with Coleman’s girlfriend, Andrea Gomez, would finish the trip for the men. “Doing what Dean Lucas would’ve wanted, finishing his surf trip off,” she wrote. “See u at the ocean Hun! Love and miss u soooo much.”
Mexican authorities are saying that the van may have been burned around November 21st, when 16 murders occurred over a 72 hour period in Sinaloa. The violent weekend was described by the general coordinator of public safety as a “reckoning.”
“Well, there are times or moments in which, unfortunately, these types of things happen,” he told reporters. “As you well know, around the end of the year situations arise, when some people come from outside the State, or they have some prior debt that they then have to pay, and these unfortunate things happen, but we are trying to catch everything.”
Although there is nothing that points to Coleman and Lucas being involved in any illicit activities, they may have simply found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the two men.
A gofundme link has been posted by the families to help bring the men home.
