Armed robberies happen in Los Cabos often enough that most don’t make headlines beyond a police blotter line. This one did, because of where the GPS signal from one of the stolen phones supposedly ended up: inside the dormitories of a Navy and National Guard battalion on the highway between San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas.
Celestino Atienzo, the eighth councilman on the Los Cabos city council, says he was among seven people held at gunpoint on the night of Friday, October 9, in Toro Muerto, a community just outside San José del Cabo. According to his account, two hooded and armed men burst into a property where Atienzo and six others — including a foreign tourist who had just arrived in the destination — were gathered. The attackers walked away with seven cell phones, a car, bank security tokens and roughly 100,000 pesos in cash, about $5,400 USD, that Atienzo says was earmarked for work obligations.
One detail stood out from the start: the robbers left a Rolex watch behind despite having every opportunity to take it, which struck victims as an odd choice for a run-of-the-mill armed robbery.
Where the Phones Went
After the attack, victims turned to family-tracking apps and Google’s location services to try to follow their stolen devices. Two iPhones stopped transmitting around 11:59 p.m. near an overpass on the bypass road toward Cabo San Lucas, where the victims later found them abandoned, along with the stolen vehicle a short distance away — apparently part of the getaway route.
A third phone told a different story. Its last recorded location placed it inside the dormitory area of Naval Infantry Battalion 46 (BIM-46), a facility shared by Mexico’s Secretaría de Marina (SEMAR, the Navy) and the National Guard, located right along the transpeninsular highway. Atienzo says the precision of the location data makes a mistake unlikely. “It strikes me as outrageous that a National Guard and Navy detachment doesn’t keep track of who comes and goes,” he said publicly. “The location of these phones is extremely accurate. It’s hard to believe they’d get it wrong.”
Adding to the suspicion, Atienzo says the attackers used language and tactics that sounded like military training, though he has not offered evidence to support that beyond his own impression of the encounter.
The Navy Says There’s Nothing There
Once the phone’s location became public, the state Attorney General’s Office for Baja California Sur (Fiscalía General del Estado) opened an investigation file, SJC/3246/2026, and asked to inspect the base. The Navy’s Cabo San Lucas naval sector confirmed it granted access and coordinated the inspection with prosecutors. The result, according to the Navy’s own statement: the phone in question was not found.
The Navy’s communiqué leaned heavily on institutional language, stating that “no conduct contrary to the Honor and Duty that characterize naval personnel is tolerated” and reaffirming its “commitment to legality, transparency and cooperation between institutions.” It added that any allegations would be handled with respect for due process, leaving it to prosecutors to determine what actually happened.
Whatever the explanation, the episode has reopened a familiar practical problem in Baja California Sur, where the Navy has steadily expanded into roles traditionally held by civilian police and local authorities. A facility that handles security duties but apparently lacks logs of who enters or leaves is going to draw scrutiny, regardless of whether anyone inside had anything to do with the robbery.
Geolocation data alone doesn’t prove who was holding the phone, and neither the state prosecutor’s office nor the Navy has confirmed that any SEMAR or National Guard personnel were involved in the Toro Muerto robbery. The state leadership of the National Action Party (PAN), Atienzo’s party, publicly backed him and the other victims, with party leader José Roberto García Mancillas saying, “Baja California Sur deserves security and clear answers. We cannot allow events of this seriousness to go unpunished.”
For now, the case sits with the state prosecutor’s office under file SJC/3246/2026, with no suspects named and no phone recovered from the base. The Navy’s willingness to let investigators in counts for something, and its usual public image in the region — search-and-rescue calls, medical evacuations, routine assistance to tourists — is not in question here. What is in question is whether a federal security installation without visitor logs is an acceptable answer to a basic request: who was on base that night, and can anyone actually say for sure?
