Ecuadorian police have released new information on the suspected British national who was killed in the South American country in an alleged vigilante killing.
On Sunday (20 April), a man described as ‘British’ and ‘English’ by local media was taken into custody on suspicion of fatally shooting a member of the rural community in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve region.
However, locals appeared to be unsatisfied with the man’s arrest and descended on the region’s police station en masse, all armed with guns and makeshift weapons.
Seeking a more definite and brutal resolution to the situation, the gang of locals – reported to number around 200 – dragged the man out of the police station in Sucumbios Province and enacted their own type of mob justice.
Which involved him being burned alive.
The incident took place in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve region of Ecuador (Getty Stock Images)
The man, who is yet to be formally identified, suffered unsurvivable injuries and died at around midday on Sunday, believed to be six hours after he was dragged from the station by the mob.
A local police chief from the Sucumbios region has now given an official statement about the events which took place, explaining that locals had reacted angrily after learning the man was to be transferred out of the region.
“The police did everything humanly possible to safeguard the person who had been apprehended over the shooting,” he said, adding that locals had threatened to burn the entire police station to the ground.
“Unfortunately the size of the mob exceeded the capacities of the seven police officers who were at the scene.”
The police chief also shared further details on the events which led up to the double killing, saying: “There had been problems between the two men that died. The man we believe to be British had shot a local man, causing his death.”
The local man has since been identified as Rodrigo Chavez.
A gang of locals dragged the man, believed to be British, from the police station and burned him alive (Cuyabeno TV)
Although not much is known about the identity of the supposed British national killed, the police chief did reveal why he’d travelled to the region.
“We know that he was working and teaching English and was making reservations for tourists visiting the area,” he said. “But we don’t have any more information right now and that is the focus of ongoing investigations which are seeking to determine his full name as well.”
Going on to add that this was all of the available information at the time, he added: “We are still trying to establish the specific identity of the citizen we believe is a British national.
“I say we’re presuming he’s English although we don’t have documents that prove his nationality status. We’re trying to confirm all the information including his migration status.
“We don’t have any proven information relating to how long he had been in this community.”
LADbible previously contacted the UK Foreign Office for comment
A US tourist was recently arrested on a beach in the UK after he said he hadn’t properly understood the laws in this country.
Now there can be some pretty niche laws you can fall foul of when travelling abroad, such as one British businessman who spent a week in jail for bringing his phone to a yoga retreat in India a few years ago.
In Marbella you can be fined €750 (£870) for peeing in the sea, while if you visit one beach in Benidorm you can be slapped with a €150 (£130) fine for building sandcastles.
But the UK law this American breached is perhaps less innocuous.
The US tourist was visiting Herne Bay (Getty Stock Image)
Kent Online reported that police were called to the picturesque seaside town of Herne Bay after they’d received reports of a man armed with a kitchen knife and listening to music from the band UB40.
While the latter is not illegal in the UK, the former most certainly is.
When police confronted the tourist, he said he came from a US state where carrying guns around was normal, so he thought he’d need to take the knife with him when going out in public in the seaside British town to protect himself.
Despite the UK’s reputation for knife crime in some circles, the US actually has a higher rate of knife crime and that’s before you even factor in all of their gun crime as well.
Studies on the matter have shown that the US has 6.81 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, almost six times higher than the UK’s rate of 1.17 per 100,000 people.
The US also has 0.53 stabbing deaths per 100,000 people, compared to the UK’s much lower rate of 0.08 stabbing deaths per 100,000.
Welcome to Herne Bay, please do not bring a knife with you when you go outside (Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)
So this guy really didn’t need to bring a knife with him.
When the police caught up to him and arrested him, the US tourist admitted to possessing the knife in public and told officers that he didn’t understand the law in the UK about carrying weapons.
The knife was taken off the man and officers explained to him what the law actually was.
A spokesperson for Kent Police told LADbible: “Kent Police was called to a report that a man had been seen with a knife in the Hampton area of Herne Bay at 10.30am on Thursday 3 April, 2025.
“Officers attended and a man, who is a US citizen and was on holiday in the area, was arrested on suspicion of possession of a knife.
“In interview, the man made a full admission to possessing the knife in public and explained he had not understood UK law around possession of weapons.
“The knife was seized and, following consideration of the circumstances, the matter was dealt with by a community resolution, during which the law was fully explained to him.”
UK laws around carrying knives
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Police arrested the American, and explained to him that carrying weapons in public was not allowed (Getty Stock Photo)
For the clarity of any other Americans who don’t want to get arrested, it’s illegal to carry a knife out in public in the UK without a ‘good reason’, and thinking you’ll need to protect yourself in the dangerous environment of a beach doesn’t count.
These ‘good reasons’ include needing the knife for work, wearing it as part of a national costume or having it for religious reasons such as the kirpan knife carried by Sikhs.
You can carry a folding pocketknife as long as the cutting edge is no longer than three inches and are not ‘lock knives’ where you use a button or mechanism to lock the blade into place.
Breaking this law can result in a prison sentence of up to four years and an unlimited fine, the government says you will get a prison sentence if you’re convicted of illegally carrying a weapon more than once
Police in Brazil say they are tracking British journalist Charlotte Peet who went missing over two weeks ago.
The news correspondent from London went to Brazil in November before she stopped communicating with her family.
Peet, 32, who has freelanced with the likes of Al Jazeera, The Times and The Evening Standard, had worked in Brazil two years ago.
Charlotte Peet has been pictured in various spots in Brazil, police say (Charlotte Peet)
Her disappearance lead to the Department of Homicide and Personal Protection (DHPP) looking for her in Sao Paulo, where she was previously last seen getting onto a bus heading to Rio de Janeiro.
However, police say they’ve been tracking her whereabouts via her phone and have ‘sent her photos, which show her getting off the bus in Rio, and in various places around Rio’.
They believe that Peet may have ‘disappeared voluntarily’.
Rio’s Civil Police has also shared various selfies of the journalist taken from one of her two mobiles.
In one picture, she is sat in a beachside bar in the Leme district of Rio de Janeiro on 15 February.
Peet left London without telling her family, they have claimed (Charlotte Peet)
While another is of Peet wearing sunglasses on a nearby street to Hotel Hilton Copacabana.
Police chief Elen Souto said: “The main line of investigation is voluntary disappearance.
“We have two mobile phone numbers for her. The British number receives messages and calls. The Brazilian number, which has an area code for Sao Paulo, is programmed to not receive calls.
“We have sent her photos, which show her getting off the bus in Rio, and in various places around Rio, to the Missing Persons Facial Recognition Programme.”
The Brazilian Foreign Press Association (ACIE) previously said in a statement that they ‘publicly express its concern about the disappearance of 32-year-old British journalist Charlotte Alice Peet and show solidarity with her family and friends’.
Police have been tracking Peet’s phone (Charlotte Peet)
They added: “As a freelance journalist Charlotte knew some of the foreign correspondents who are members of the Brazilian Foreign Press Association. She reported from Brazil for foreign media, including Al Jazeera and British and even Portuguese media outlets. The ACIE and its leadership calls on the relevant authorities to intensify their work to try to find the missing British journalist as soon as possible.”
“I wouldn’t say that it was normal, there was something on her mind obviously otherwise she would have let us know,” her concerned father Derek previously told Sky News about Peet travelling to Brazil without telling her family.
“It’s very worrying but I don’t have any more to say, I’m very concerned but I just don’t know what’s going on, we’re just trying to pick up the pieces really.
“She was then traced to Gatwick Airport and was found to have boarded a plane to Sao Paulo and then the trail went cold.”
A Brit grandmother who has been stuck on death row in Bali for more than a decade has been reunited with her loved ones for the first time in years.
Lindsay Sandiford has been locked up in Indonesia’s notorious Kerobokan Prison since 2013 after being found guilty of trying to smuggle £1.6million of cocaine into the country.
The former legal secretary, 68, was sentenced to death by a firing squad after the drugs were discovered in the lining of her suitcase by officials at the Ngurah Rai International Airport.
She told police that she was forced into carrying the cocaine by a criminal gang who threatened to hurt her family, before helping authorities prosecute others who were involved in the drugs ring.
Sandiford has spent the last 12 years on death row in Bali’s brutal prison, with multiple appeals for her freedom being rejected.
Lindsay Sandiford has been on death row in Bali for more than a decade (SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Brit is said to have earned the nickname ‘grandmother’ from her fellow inmates, who she has taught to knit during her time behind bars.
And now, Sandiford has reportedly had ‘cuddles and kisses’ with her grandchildren for the first time in over a decade as her family members made a rare visit to Kerobokan Prison.
“She was happy and all went well,” a prison source told the Mirror.
“Normally, these visits are held away from the normal meeting area but still have walls and iron bars with one door.
“There’s always one or more guards who are stationed within earshot. But she was allowed to hold her family and have cuddles and kisses.”
Another source also told the publication that Sandiford is ‘now dreaming of freedom’, despite previously accepting her fate.
The grandmother reportedly reunited with her family during a rare visit (SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP via Getty Images)
Back in 2015, Sandiford was visited by the granddaughter she had never met, who was born seven months after her arrest in May 2012.
She was set to be executed in eight days at the time, although this decision was later reversed.
There has been renewed hope that Sandiford could be spared from the death penalty, as legal experts have suggested there could be major changes made to Indonesian law this year.
It could result in the grandmother’s death sentence being changed into a life term, before her lawyers could then argue that she should be allowed to return to the UK.
She could then walk free when she’s back on home soil due to all the time she has served in prison in Indonesia.
One of Sandiford’s former cellmates previously spoke out about how she was coping with life behind bars, revealing she was struggling and had become withdrawn.
Police have issued an update regarding the death of ice hockey star, Adam Johnson.
Johnson, 29, from Minnesota, was killed in October last year when he collided with another player in a tragic ice hockey accident.
The Nottingham Panthers star – who was competing in Sheffield at the time – was fatally injured during the game.
The American hockey player suffered a cut to the neck during the match, with more than 8,000 fans watching from the sidelines.
Johnson sadly passed away in October (Joe Sargent/NHLIGetty Images)
According to witnesses, players from both the Sheffield and Nottingham teams quickly formed a ring around Johnson after he suffered the fatal injury.
He was rushed to hospital but sadly passed away.
Following the incident, a man was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Now, South Yorkshire Police have provided an update on the case. Authorities have confirmed the man arrested has been re-bailed until 14 May.
A spokeswoman said: “A man who is under investigation following the death of ice hockey player Adam Johnson in Sheffield has been re-bailed.
“Adam, aged 29, was fatally injured during a game between the Sheffield Steelers and Nottingham Panthers on 28 October last year.
“He was sadly later pronounced dead in hospital, and a post mortem confirmed he died as a result of a neck injury.
“A man was arrested on 14 November last year on suspicion of manslaughter and later bailed. He has been further re-bailed until Tuesday 14 May 2024.
“Our thoughts remain with Adam’s loved ones as our investigation continues.”
Adam’s partner Ryan Wolfe was part of the 8,000 plus crowd at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena.
Speaking at the Memorial Building Arena in Minnesota after the incident, she said: “There’s so many things I could say about Adam and if I had the time I would talk about him for hours, but instead I wanted to write him a letter similar to something I would’ve written him for our wedding day.
“I want you to know how much I love you and adore you. You have been so amazingly supportive and kind to me since the day we met and I couldn’t be more grateful for it.
“I always thought that maybe if I was lucky enough after a lifetime together I might start to be more like you.
“You’re such a special person, you had the best sense of humour, the biggest heart, the quickest wit and the kindest soul.”
Adam Johnson and his fiancee Ryan Wolfe (Instagram/Ryan Wolfe)
As a result of the incident, the coroner involved with the case called on ice hockey’s governing body to introduce more neck protection for players.
Sheffield senior coroner Tanyka Rawden issued a Prevention of Future Deaths Report to Ice Hockey UK and the English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) about using neck guards in the sport.
Rawden said she was ‘sufficiently concerned that deaths may occur in the future if neck guards or protectors are not worn’.
The English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) has said that neck guards will become mandatory from 2024 onwards, but it cannot control the Elite Ice Hockey League where the Nottingham Panthers and Sheffield Steelers compete.
The league said it would not be making neck guards mandatory but would ‘strongly encourage’ players to wear them.