Three would-be robbers in Mexico came close to dying at the hands of an angry mob that was getting ready to set them on fire before police intervened.

Last week, villagers from Villa Tamulte de las Sabanas took justice into their own hands when they began to repeatedly beat Jonathan Hernandez Perez and two brothers, Jose Ignacio and Fabian de la Cruz, Mexico’s El Diario de Tabasco reported.

The three men had tied to rob a bakery and had apparently struck some of the customers with a machete.

“You hit the lady with a machete” the angry neighbors yelled out as they hit the would be robbers. Police officers attempted to keep the mob at bay.

The legal fate of the would-be robbers remains unclear. while the issue of lynchings in the central parts of Mexico continue to be on the rise.

Earlier this year, Breitbart Texas reported on the dramatic increase in lynchings in Mexico where rampant impunity and lack of basic security conditions has driven some of the poor communities in that country to take justice into their own hands. The practice continues to rise. Mexico’s Autonomous University recorded 366 lynchings from 1988 to 2014. In 2015, that figure jumped to 63 lynchings in one year. While the number of Mexican lynchings in 2016 remains unclear, there have been various high profile cases.

The lynching of the robbers in Tabasco comes just weeks after neighbors in the Tabasco state capital of Villa Hermosa beat and hacked to death a man who they believed had been trying to rape an underage girl. As Mexico’s El Universal reported, in early February neighbors burned down the house of the alleged rapists in order to draw him out from his hideout. The case began when an underage girl claimed that a man known as “El Chayo” and another known as “El Flaco” had tried to force her into a house and rape her.

The neighbors surrounded the house of “El Chayo” and tried to draw him out but police officers arrived and attempted to restore the peace. As time passed, the neighbors saw that the two alleged rapists had not been arrested so they rallied around “El Chayo’s” house once again. This time, they set fire to the house in order to draw him out. Once the alleged rapist came out of the house neighbors used clubs, and machetes to kill him. Authorities in Tabasco have not made any arrests in the case.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.