#Missing Los Angeles firefighter feared kidnapped in Mexico

A missing Los Angeles firefighter may have been violently kidnapped in Mexico, city officials said.

Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that the city is working to ensure Francisco Aguilar, a 20-year Los Angeles Fire Department vet, is returned safely after relatives said they last heard from him in late August as he visited his condo in Rosarito, a resort town on the coast of Baja California.

“I want to say very clearly to anybody who would kidnap a member of our fire department, that this is a member not just of our city government family, but of our community here in Los Angeles,” Garcetti told reporters. “We will work tirelessly to make sure that Frank is returned safely.”

Citing Mexican authorities, Garcetti said the 48-year-old Aguilar may have been the victim of a “violent kidnapping” during his trip. City officials are now working with Mexican authorities via the State Department and the local consul-general from Mexico to find Aguilar and bring him home, Garcetti said.

“And if this message gets to anybody who would dare kidnap an Angeleno who serves the people of Los Angeles, let him go and make sure that he is able to safely return to our city and his family,” Garcetti told reporters during his daily coronavirus briefing.

Relatives told CBS Los Angeles they last heard from Aguilar on Aug. 21. His brother and cousin then went to Aguilar’s condo and found the residence ransacked, with tables overturned and his vehicles missing.

“We were on FaceTime the other day and he was on the beach and just talking about how it was so much fun and this was a little taste of what retirement would be like for him,” Aguilar’s daughter, Amaris, told the station. “I just pray with every fiber in my being that my father returns to us.”

Aguilar had been on medical leave from the department since March, NBC Los Angeles reports.

FBI investigators are assisting in the search for Aguilar after his family filed a missing persons report in nearby Tijuana, the station reports.

Aguilar’s phone has also been shut off, according to KABC. Relatives told the station Mexican authorities had retrieved video footage from a Ring security camera inside his condo, but haven’t been told what it depicts aside from that they’re concerned for Aguilar’s safety.

No ransom demand had been made for Aguilar, relatives told KABC.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told the Los Angeles Times last month that agents had offered assistance in the investigation, but was not leading the search for Aguilar.

“That’s their jurisdiction,” Eimiller told the newspaper. “We have to defer to Mexican authorities.”

Aguilar, a father of two, was assigned to Station 44 in Los Angeles’ Cypress Park section, the Times reported.