Before dying, the one victim who had been wounded and transferred to the hospital told his mother that one of the gunmen was a member of the Intelligence Division of the Colombian National Police, called F-2. Speculation following the massacre centered on a number of police officers who lived in the area, members of the F-2 and of the judicial police. Because the victims were either very young or activists, it was apparent that this was not a gang shooting. A number of theories about the motivation for the crime appeared in the weeks afterward; that the attack was police retaliation for the killing of two police officers earlier that day, that the victims had been mistaken for a youth gang and killed by accident, or that the victims had been targeted because a number of them were activists. Later ballistics tests confirmed that the bullets used in the killings were those used by both the Colombian National Police and the Colombian Army.