La Bruja de Guadalupe: the witch that attacked Officer Leonardo Samaniego's patrol car

Guadalupe sits inside the Monterrey metropolitan area in northern Mexico. In January 2004, Leonardo Samaniego Gallegos was a municipal police officer there, working for the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública. His car was patrol unit 014. His beat included Colonia Valles de la Silla.

Friday, January 16, 2004. About 3:15 in the morning. Samaniego was driving along Calle Álamo. His round, he said later, had been quiet. Then something fell. At first he took it for a bird or a trash bag. It stopped in the air. "Unos 50 centímetros antes de que cayera al piso, cayó una señora así de espalda con los brazos abiertos, vestida de negro."

In the 2004 account translated by Santiago Yturria, "some large black object appeared to leap from a tree next to the street and turn to face the police car." It was "a woman dressed in black, who didn't really touch the street, she just floated several feet above the ground." Her "two large black eyes, totally without lids, seemed bothered by the patrol car's headlights." She raised her cape to shield them. Dark brown skin. A cloak and cape "like a witch". No broom.

Samaniego put the car in reverse. She followed. "Comenzó a acercarse y yo a retroceder, cuando llegué a la esquina de la calle vi cómo se estrelló contra el parabrisas." She had "flown violently at his windshield, trying to drive her hands through the glass to grab him." He shouted for backup on the radio. At the end of the street, he lost consciousness.

Two units arrived with an ambulance. They found him unconscious in his car. He came round in the ambulance and was taken to Hospital Universitario in Monterrey. Toxicology was negative for drugs, alcohol and hallucinogens. A psychological evaluation found him mentally healthy. Colleagues heard his call for help. None of them saw the woman.

The story broke on Monterrey TV channels 2 and 34 and in El Norte and Milenio. Brad Steiger and Albert Rosales later placed it among the flying humanoid encounters of the era. The legend grew. Three Santa Catarina officers had reportedly seen the same creature three days earlier and kept quiet. A 2025 account adds that men in black interviewed Samaniego and took his uniform. No other source carries that claim.

Samaniego stayed on the force for 11 years. In 2008 he said: "I do not believe the entity to be a witch, but I do know that it is something that we cannot explain." In 2023 he admitted the nights were the hardest. "Todas las noches sigo soñando con esos ojos."

No police or municipal conclusion has ever surfaced. Writers at Wiki Pseudociencias point to owls and barn owls, common locally, which fly low and silently with strong talons. Herons, too. Add darkness after 3 a.m., headlight shadows and a brain filling the gaps. Jaime Maussan reportedly tied the case to the Flatwoods Monster. Others have proposed costumed people, demons or extraterrestrials.

The retellings do not always agree. The street becomes Fresno or Aldama. The woman is elderly, or 30 to 40. Later versions fold in a separate 2006 Santa Catarina case of winged witches and a 2008 video from a Monterrey UFO club. Neither is the 2004 event. Yet every anniversary, the local press comes back to Calle Álamo, and to an officer who still remembers the eyes.