Peru’s National Police force have located a motorcycle they believe belonged to the Comox Valley man who was killed by villagers who accused him of shooting a spiritual leader.
Officers found the vehicle Tuesday morning, about 50 metres from where Woodroffe’s body was found Saturday in a shallow grave, according to El Comercio. The newspaper published photos of about a dozen police officers searching the long grass in the community of Victoria Gracia in Peru’s Ucayali region.
Investigators were looking for a firearm, the newspaper reported, which could be key to determining whether Woodroffe committed the crime villagers accused him of: the shooting death of Olivia Arévalo, a plant healer and Indigenous people’s rights activist from the Shipibo-Konibo tribe of northeastern Peru.
Peru’s attorney general ordered the arrests of two men wanted in connection with Woodroffe’s killing. José Ramírez Rodríguez and Nicolás Mori Guimaraes, both from Victoria Gracia, were identified through a cellphone video showing the lynching of Woodroffe, 41.
Arévalo, 81, who carried out ayahuasca ceremonies for westerners, was found dead in her home on Thursday.
Woodroffe, believed to be one of her clients, was killed later the same day, officials said.
Officials have backed away from claims that Woodroffe was a prime suspect in Arévalo’s killing, stating that forensic tests have yet to confirm this.
Woodroffe, who lived in Courtenay and Cumberland, had travelled to Peru to experiment with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew made of native plants. He wrote on a fundraising site that he decided to become an addictions counsellor using plant-based medicine after watching a family member struggle with alcohol addiction.
Gabor Maté, a retired B.C. physician, has tried ayahuasca and uses it to treat the root causes of addiction. He said he has seen it help people struggling with addictions, suicidal thoughts or depression.
Unlike alcohol, the substance is not typically associated with violence, Maté said. “Hundreds of thousands of people have done this. You see very few examples of violence.”
There have been some high-profile deaths associated with ayahuasca, however.
In 2015, Joshua Stevens of Winnipeg fatally stabbed a London man at a retreat near Iquitos, a few hours from where Woodroffe was killed. Stevens, then 29, told CTV Winnipeg that he stabbed Unais Gomes in self-defence after the 26-year-old attacked him and two other people with a butcher’s knife.
Stevens was allowed to return to Canada after witnesses backed up his version of events.
