Voice of America
2 December 2016
Reuters
LIMA — One woman has been killed and some 40 people
were arrested in a Peruvian shantytown after an angry mob tried to lynch two
pollsters whom residents believed were butchering local children to take their
organs, authorities said Friday.
False rumors on
social media claiming dead children had been found with their organs missing
fanned mass hysteria in the shantytown Huaycan on the outskirts of Lima,
prompting residents to target two employees of a polling company who had been
conducting door-to-door marketing surveys, said Police General Hugo Begazo.
"From one
second to the next, people started to surround us," said visibly shaken
Luis Nunez with polling firm Quantum in broadcast comments. "They nearly
lynched us and set us on fire."
Police managed to
pry Nunez and his colleague from the mob, which then attacked the police
station in Huaycan where they were being held for their protection, Begazo
said. […]
