Students, parents, friends and residents of this town in southern Mexico are demanding justice in the case of a slain student they say was the victim of horrific torture.

The slaying of Julio Cesar Mondragon, the shooting deaths of three of his fellow students and the disappearance of 43 others in Iguala, Mexico, are sending shock waves across the nation.

What happened to Mondragon is difficult to describe. Those who knew the victim are outraged and fearful.

The body of the 22-year-old college student was found lying on a street in Iguala in the early hours of September 27. The skin of his face had been peeled off and his eyes gouged out, according to witnesses and relatives who spoke to CNN.

Authorities in Mexico confirmed the witnesses' accounts.

Mondragon was a student at a rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state. Fellow students say that on the night of September 26, a group of about 100 of them, including Mondragon, decided to go to Iguala, about two hours away, to stage a protest in Iguala.

According to authorities, the students, traveling in buses and a van, were attacked and fired on by Iguala police officers.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam says the officers were working with a criminal gang that had deep ties with local government in Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula.

Six people, including three students, died in the shootings. Aldo Gutierrez Solano, a 19-year-old student who was shot in the head, is in a coma.

Forty-three of students were abducted by the officers and remain missing.

The Iguala incident in has sparked protests all across Mexico, some of them violent. There have been multiple acts of vandalism in Guerrero state. Protesters have blocked roads and toll booths in cities like Chilpancingo, the capital. They have also blocked access to shopping malls in the beach resort of Acapulco.

Former Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, were arrested Tuesday. They had been staying in a run-down house in an impoverished neighborhood in Mexico City.

Mexican officials say the couple, along with the town's director of public safety, are the "probable masterminds" of the attack against the students. They were known by Mexican media as "the imperial couple." Political enemies say they ran Iguala as if it were their personal fiefdom.

Nearly a month after the Iguala incident, Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre, who was criticized for not acting quickly enough after the abductions, requested and was granted a leave of absence.

(CNN)