Thieves highjack a truck filled with radioactive material in Mexico

The radioactive material called cobalt-60 was being carried in a truck from a hospital in Tijuana to a storage facility in a central part of Mexico when the vehicle was stolen. Authorities feared the possibility that the thieves were intending to make a bomb, and a two-day hunt took place to track down the truck. The International Atomic Energy Agency warned that if the material were to be removed from its casing, it “could be extremely dangerous to a person.”

The hunt finally ended on Wednesday when authorities found the material and the cargo truck, which had a crane attached, in a rural area about 25 miles from where the truck was first stolen. Authorities say that the material had been taken out of the casing, and the thieves were nowhere in sight. “I believe, definitely, that the thieves did not know what they had; they were interested in the crane, in the vehicle,” physicist Mardonio Jimenez said.

However, the two men will not last long now that they have been exposed to the material. “The people who handled it will have severe problems with radiation,” Jimenez said. “They will, without a doubt, die.”