A Canadian man studying hallucinogenic medicine in the Amazon rainforest has been killed by a Peruvian mob, who blame him for murdering a respected elderly shaman.
Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, traveled to Peru to study natural medicine and to seek enlightenment.
However his journey towards ‘deeper meaning’ took a dark turn when he allegedly shot Indigenous healer Olivia Arevalo Lomas, 81, dead.
Canadian man Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, was lynched in Peru on Thursday after villagers claimed he fatally shot dead revered Indigenous healer Olivia Arevalo, 81
A graphic image on Facebook reveals Arevalo’s body after she was fatally shot twice
Arevalo, a member of the Shipibo-Konibo tribe in the village of Victoria Gracia in northeast Peru, was killed on Thursday by two fatal shots.
The beloved shaman ran a lucrative healing center that offered ayahuasca – an Indigenous hallucinogenic mixture – to Westerners, according to CBC.
Woodroffe is believed to be one of her patients.
Peruvian authorities describe Woodroffe as her killer.
Woodroffe was lynched by people of the Ucayali region of the Amazon rain forest who blame him for the healer’s death that same day.
Peruvian police said the Canadian man was brutally dragged by the neck through the rain forest.
The double murder took place in the Ucayali region of northeast Peru in the Amazon forest
A cellphone video released by local press displays a man covered in blood believed to be Woodroffe begging for mercy as he was dragged by a rope around his neck between thatch-roofed homes.
He is last seen in the video motionless on the muddy ground.
On Saturday officials dug up Woodroffe’s body from an unmarked grave in the forest 0.6miles away from Arevalo’s home.
‘The body had been fully identified (as that of Sebastian Woodroffe) using fingerprints,’ General Jorge Lam, the lead police officer in the double murder inquiry, said to The Guardian.
Ricardo Palma Jimenez, the head of the group of prosecutors in Ucayali, said that no arrests have been made in relation to Woodroffe’s death.
‘We will not rest until both murders, of the Indigenous woman as well as the Canadian man, are solved,’ he said in a phone interview to Reuters.
The Amazon rain forest has long attracted foreigners to experiment with ayahuasca – a dark colored and bitter brew made of a mixture of native plants that includes dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which can lead to psychedelic experiences.
Arevalo was a member of the Shipibo-Konibo tribe and ran healing center that offered ayahuasca – an Indigenous hallucinogenic mixture – to Westerners
Woodroffe had reportedly been to South America several times to study natural healing and plant remedies. His friends said he became more distant after trying ayahuasca
Peruvian police confirmed that Woodroffe’s dead body was found half a mile away from Arevalo’s home
The hallucinogenic cocktail, also known as yage, is a centuries old recipe used by Indigenous tribes in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia as a cure for a variety of ailments.
It is not known to lead to violence.
However in 2015, a Canadian fatally stabbed a fellow tourist from England after the two drank ayahuasca together in a spiritual ceremony a few hours’ drive from where Woodroffe was killed.
Woodroffe had been reportedly living in the Ucayali regional capital of Pucallpa for some time.
His friends told CBC that he first traveled to Peru in 2016 to learn about natural healing and plant remedies. He became more distant after trying ayahuasca.
His friend Yarrow Willard said that he’d return home from South America ‘not broken, but troubled’.
He wanted to be an apprentice with the plant healer and aspired to become an addiction counselor using hallucinogenic medicine.
‘The plant medicine I have the opportunity of learning is far deeper than ingesting a plant and being healed. It is not about getting “high” either. It is true some of the plants I will be learning about do have a perception-altering effect, but these are a few plants out of thousands I will be working with,’ he wrote on the Indiegogo crowd-funding website seeking financial help for his studies.
‘I am in this for the long haul. This is more than a ‘job’ to me. I want not only for people to recover … I want to turn them on to the wonders of existence, and have them leave as a renewed friend and lover of this thing we call life,’ he added.
Ronald Suárez, the highest authority Shipibo-Konibo tribe of 40,000 said Woodroffe’s killers ‘acted on the spur of the moment and resorted to traditional justice’ according to the Guardian.
‘But we are a peaceful people who have always lived in harmony with nature,’ he added.
‘We have little confidence in the police as, so often, crimes against us go unpunished,’ he said.
Arevalo’s murder has led to mourning throughout the village.
She was praised as a ‘walking library of our traditional knowledge, the maximum expression of our culture’.
Her death follows a list of unsolved murders of Indigenous activists who are bombarded with death threats for protecting their land.