Canadian lynched in Peru as locals accuse him of murder

Officials in Peru are investigating the lynching of a Canadian man in the remote Amazon region of Peru.

Police found the body of Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, on Saturday buried near where an indigenous spiritual healer had been killed days previously.

Investigators say locals suspected Mr Woodroffe of the murder of 81-year-old Olivia Arévalo, who was shot dead on Thursday.

Officials said they would not rest until both murders had been solved.

Who was Sebastian Woodroffe?

Mr Woodroffe was a Canadian citizen from the town of Courtenay on the east coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Canadian broadcaster CBC quoted a friend of Mr Woodroffe as saying that the 41-year-old had travelled to Peru on a number of occasions to experiment with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drug.

Yarrow Willard described Mr Woodroffe as a gentle person on a journey to find enlightenment and "deeper meaning".

According to Canadian news portal Canoe.com, Mr Woodroffe went to the Ucayali region in Peru's rainforest hoping to do an apprenticeship with a plant healer from the Shipibo indigenous group.

"I feel responsible trying to support this culture and retain some of their treasure in me and my family, and share it with those that wish to learn," Mr Woodroffe wrote on a fundraising site.

His goal was to change careers to become an addiction counsellor using hallucinogenic medicine.

A family member's struggle with alcoholism inspired Mr Woodroffe's decision to help "fix the family spirit", he said in a 2013 YouTube video.

What happened to him?

Police launched a search for the Canadian after a video emerged on social media showing a man identified by Peruvian prosecutors as Mr Woodroffe lying in a puddle groaning while another man puts a rope around his neck and drags him along.

A group of locals stands by and watches while the man with the rope around his neck appears to go limp.

Mr Woodroffe's body was found in a shallow unmarked grave on Saturday.

Peruvian officials say forensic tests carried out on his body show that he died by strangulation and that he had received several blows across his body.

Why was he killed?

Local prosecutor Ricardo Palma Jimenez says officials are still investigating several theories as to why Mr Woodroffe was killed but local media say some villagers blamed him for the killing of Olivia Arévalo.

Mr Woodroffe had not been named as a suspect in Ms Arévalo's murder but villagers suspected him because he was allegedly one of the spiritual healer's clients.

"A foreigner can come and kill us, day after day, like dogs or cats, and nothing happens, the state does nothing," one local woman told a Peruvian official on television, according to the Washington Post.

"We want the communities of the Amazon to know that there is justice," Jimenez told TV Peru in Ucayali. "But not justice by their own hands."

Who was Olivia Arévalo?

Ms Arévalo was a member of the indigenous Shipibo-Conibo group, who was known as a spiritual healer and shaman in her local community.

She was also a vocal advocate for the group's culture and rights.

She was shot dead outside her home on Thursday. Her killing sparked outrage among the local community who have seen a number of indigenous leaders killed over recent years.

As a spiritual healer, Ms Arévalo would have had extensive knowledge about ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic drug Mr Woodroffe went to the Amazon to study.

The Shipibo have been using ayahuasca for centuries as part of their "healing ceremonies".

What's ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca is considered one of the strongest psychedelic drugs in the world.

Also known as yage, it is a blend of two plants - the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and a shrub called chacruna (Psychotria viridis), which contains the hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT).

DMT - and therefore ayahuasca - is illegal in the UK, the US and many other countries although some exceptions are made for members of particular churches which use the tea as part of their religious ceremonies.

It has been used by shamans, or healers, in the Amazon for centuries for medical and spiritual purposes.

It has become increasingly popular with backpackers who take part in ayahuasca ceremonies in the rainforest.

A number of deaths has been attributed to the drug, including that of British gap-year student Henry Miller in Colombia in 2014 and that of New Zealander Matthew Dawson-Clarke last year.

In at least one case, a Briton was stabbed to death during an ayahuasca ceremony when he allegedly attacked a Canadian who was also taking part in the ceremony.

Are lynchings common in the area?

Remote areas of the Amazon have a very thin police presence and crimes often go unpunished.

Communities sometimes bypass the police altogether, choosing to punish those they suspect of committing crimes themselves.

Local media report that villagers were outraged by the murder of Ms Arévalo, who was an influential figure.

It is not clear, however, why their anger focussed on the Canadian as other indigenous leaders have in the past been targeted by landowners.

...Her killing sparked outrage among the local community who have seen a number of indigenous leaders killed over recent years...

I'd like to know what this lynching was based on ,aside from the fact that a healer was shot and they seemed to quickly turn to this guy to blame, hard to make anything out've this situation it seems. Hard to say one way or another.

Legarto, you said it well, the socio/cultural dynamics of the situation [difficult to make heads or tails], all the intricacies and things that were most likely left out of this article that make the situation 'the situation'. A gloss more or less I think.

Hope they can find out with some certitude who had shot the healer. Unfortunate on both fronts.

Primates doin primate things, apple sometimes does not fall all that far in many regards.

EVERYTHING is perspective.

She was also a vocal advocate for the group's culture and rights.

Her killing sparked outrage among the local community who have seen a number of indigenous leaders killed over recent years

Summarizing murder as "a matter of perspective"? Is this a mistaken attempt at satire?

Here is what Cielo Tierra, who lives in the area and is knowledgeable of the situation, wrote:

I live here and visited her house 4 hours after the killing.
He was mentally unblanced had been threatening to kill people in the village for 8 months.

As 8 months ago he was there for ceremony and had his stuff stolen. At that time he went crazy with a big stick hitting people and they villagers tied him up and took him to the police. The police let him go.
Now he has constantly returned threatening to kill them and the other day he did.
There were witnesses. He shot her then went to leave on his bike but the bike failed to start and they grabbed him.

All this talk about an unkown columbian money lender was an attempt of a cover for his killing.
Then someone posted the video of his killing.
So that is the story as best as i can say.

From the Ayahuasca forum:

This is something a journalist posted on FB:

UPDATE ON MURDER OF PERU SHAMAN

I didn't want to post this until I had more information. I'll post another article or two in the comment section. The story is so fresh that each current article gets parts of the story correct but omits some info.

This post concerns the recent murder of octogenarian Peruvian female shaman Olivia Arevalo Lomas — from the Shipibo-Conibo ethnic group, who was shot twice and died at her home in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest on Thursday. Initial news reports implied that powerful opponents from the natural resource extraction industries (or similar) might have been behind the killing.

Turns out it may have been a 41 year old Canadian man named Sebastian Woodroffe, who hails from Comox Valley on B.C.'s Vancouver Island. Woodroffe has a wife and son, who had some kind of grievance, who pulled up on a motor bike, called her to the door, shot her twice and took off. Lomas' two grand daughters and others witnessed the death. He was tracked down and subsequently beaten and then strangled to death by locals who took justice into their own hands. A gruesome internet video shot on someone's camera phone captured the whole thing.

According to a friend of mine who owns a retreat center in Iquitos, Woodroffe had threatened Lomas and her family several times. This was reported to the police. At one point he had been hitting people in the head with a stick. The villagers tied him up and took him to the police who later let him go. When the family heard he was asking to purchase a pistol, they reported this to the police. Police picked him up and then released him. (In retrospect he should have been arrested and deported.)

Note that there's no evidence that Woodroffe was in the thrall of ayahuasca or any other plant medicine on the night of the killing. There was no ceremony the night before at Lomas' facility and he shot her at 12:31 pm.

But i think it's true nevertheless. If i kill you, that feels realy different to me, than if you would kill me instead.

To everything, there are many possible perspectives. That does not imply that everything can be reduced and trivialized to mere perspective. So no, it's not generally true.

I just veiwed this video and am amazed at how sick humans can be!

Humans are capable of great kindness and love but they also have a dark side ..

something smells here!

Even if his stuff was stolen from someone within the community .

I'm curious what made the villagers think that fellow was responsible, rather than some oil industry goons or the like.

...unfortunate medicine seeker...

I wonder how difficult it is for a Canadian national on international travel to secure a gun in Peru?

My uninmorfed feeling is that he did not murder the shaman. Maybe this is a case of guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could be wrong though.

this link with a wider perspective on this was sent to me by someone who claims to have personal knowledge, and who verifies this account.

Fast facts:

-Woodroffe first came to Peru over four years ago after setting up a crowdfunding campaign.
-Woodroffe originally went to Iquitos to study the hallucinogenic drug, ayahuasca. He ended up in Ucayali.
-Arevalo’s son owed Woodroffe over $4,000.
-Woodroffe was reported to police for drinking in the village in the days before Arevalo’s murder.
-Police have the receipt showing Woodroffe bought the gun a few days before Arevalo’s murder.
-Ballistic tests show that gun fired the bullets that killed Arevalo.
-Woodroffe’s clothes had gunpowder on them.