MEXICO ( Police Find Boy’s Body, Rescue 2 Girls in Central Mexico )

MEXICO CITY – Police in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato rescued two girls, ages 5 and 6, and found the body of a boy who was murdered by his parents and buried in a clandestine grave, officials said.

Police found the girls, who had been beaten, and the boy’s body after receiving a tip from the public about child abuse at a business in the city of Acambaro, a Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office spokesman told Efe.

A citizen used ProcuarApp, a mobile application that allows citizens to send tips to authorities using their cell phones, to notify officials.

Police investigated the tip and located the property where the children were being abused in less than 30 minutes.

A citizen sent a photograph to authorities showing the two girls “obviously beaten and hanging by the arms,” the AG’s office spokesman said.

AG’s office agents entered the two-story building and arrested 35-year-old Jesus Nava Medina, who confessed that the girls and their mother were at his car wash.

Investigators found the girls in a dark room, where they were tied up.

The girls, who were dehydrated and malnourished, had wounds on their hands and bodies from beatings, the AG’s office spokesman said.

The girls told investigators that the adults had tied them up and one of the victims said they had a brother who had not been around for some time.

The woman was questioned and told investigators that her spouse, Nava Medina, murdered her 7-year-old son in August 2013 and buried him in a plastic industrial barrel in the yard of their house.

Investigators searched the property and found the boy’s remains in a barrel filled with cement and soil.

The coroner’s office determined that the boy died from blunt trauma to the head and chest,” the AG’s office spokesman said.