A journey warning has been issued for a well-liked Colombian vacationer vacation spot following a spate of grizzly murders of holiday-makers who seem to have fallen sufferer of relationship app traps.
Following yet one more mysterious killing of an American citizen, the US embassy has warned vacationers of the hazards of utilizing reminiscent of Tinder, Grindr and Bumble when visiting Medellin in Colombia. The physique of Tou Ger Xiong, a 50-year-old Hmong-American neighborhood activist and comic from Minnesota, was present in remoted woodland close to the mountain metropolis in December final 12 months.
The American who had visited Medellin beforehand, was a pair weeks right into a two-month journey and had been talking to a girl on-line earlier than he set off.
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His brother, Eh Xiong, informed the BBC that Tou Ger had contacted him the day earlier than his physique was discovered asking for $2000 however did not clarify why he wanted it. The subsequent day Eh found his brother had been kidnapped and held at ransom for the cash earlier than being murdered. A lady and two males have been arrested in connection to his dying.
It’s unclear whether or not the American met the lady on a relationship app not, nevertheless Tou Ger is one in every of eight Americans who had been murdered in suspicious circumstances in Medellin in November and December of final 12 months, which prompted the US authorities to challenge the warning.
The warning said that “the deaths appear to involve either involuntary drugging overdose or are suspected homicides”. While the US state division believes the deaths are unrelated, it highlighted that drugging, theft and overdoes, in addition to the usage of “online dating applications” seemed to be evident in a number of of the circumstances.
The embassy additionally warned of gangs utilizing relationship app to lure in victims simply to assault and rob them afterward and mentioned that quite a few Americans had been drugged, robbed and killed by their Colombian dates when visiting the nation.
According to Medellin’s tourism physique, the variety of violent vacationer deaths within the metropolis had elevated by 29 % within the final trimester of 2023 that earlier years, and that thefts dedicated in opposition to vacationers had been up by 200 per cent. The vacationer board additionally revealed that a lot of the victims of those grizzly, violent deaths in 2023 had been Americans.
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