MONTERREY, Mexico – U.S. diplomats in this northern city said Wednesday that they are in “close contact” with Mexican authorities to ensure a thorough investigation of the murder of a California teacher.

The spokesman at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Brian Quigley, told Efe that the body of Agustin Roberto Salcedo, 33, has already been repatriated to El Monte, California, where he was deputy principal at a high school.

The U.S. citizen was fatally shot Dec. 31 in Gomez Palacio, a town in the northern state of Durango, where he and his wife had traveled to spend the holidays with her family.

American officials have emphasized to Mexican counterparts “the urgency of carrying out a rigorous investigation of the crime, arresting those responsible and prosecuting them to the fullest extent under Mexican laws,” a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico told Efe.

The bodies of Salcedo and five other people between the ages of 25 and 35 were discovered on the morning of Dec. 31 near a canal in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Gomez Palacio, the Durango state Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday.

The victims, who were shot with rifles, had been abducted the previous night from the Buchacas bar.

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