A journalist was shot to demise Wednesday in northeastern Mexico as he was leaving his home along with his 23-year-old daughter, who was severely injured, in keeping with state prosecutors and the newspaper that employed him.
Antonio de la Cruz, 47, was a reporter for the native newspaper Expreso for nearly three a long time. He's the twelfth journalist killed this yr within the nation.
De la Cruz was shot on the door of his home in Ciudad Victoria, capital of the state of Tamaulipas on the U.S. border. The area is mired in violence linked to organized crime.
Expreso covers every kind of stories within the metropolis, together with safety points. De la Cruz reported on rural and social matters equivalent to water shortages.
He additionally lined the Movimiento Ciudadano political occasion and its native deputy, Gustavo Cardenas Gutiérrez, who condemned the killing.
De la Cruz was "very conscious of the fact of Tamaulipas, very courageous," Miguel Domínguez, director of the newspaper, stated in an interview with Milenio Televisión.
"He by no means expressed any concern to us," Domínguez stated.
Expreso has been focused through the years. In 2012, one of many worst years of drug cartel violence, a automobile bomb exploded in entrance of the newspaper's constructing. In 2018, a cooler with a human head inside was left on the newspaper, with a warning to not report on violence within the metropolis.
The governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, promised an investigation of the killing Wednesday in order that "this cowardly crime doesn't go unpunished."
The state prosecutor's workplace stated that the specialised unit for investigating crimes towards freedom of expression had been knowledgeable. The federal prosecutor's workplace stated it was opening an investigation.
Different Mexican journalists killed in 2022
Final month, two colleagues at a information website have been shot to demise within the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. The Veracruz State Prosecutor's Workplace stated it was investigating the killings of Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera, the director and a reporter, respectively, of the web information website El Veraz in Cosoleacaque.
In March, prosecutors within the western state of Michoacan stated reporter Armando Linares was shot to demise at a house within the city of Zitacuaro. His killing got here six weeks after the slaying of a colleague, Roberto Toledo, from the identical outlet, Monitor Michoacan. It was Linares who introduced Toledo's demise Jan. 31 in a video posted to social media.
In early March, gunmen killed Juan Carlos Muñiz, who lined crime for the web information website Testigo Minero within the state of Zacatecas.
Jorge Camero, the director of a web-based information website who was till not too long ago a municipal employee within the northern state of Sonora, was killed in late February.
In early February, Heber López, director of the web information website Noticias Net, was shot to demise within the southern state of Oaxaca.
Reporter Lourdes Maldonado López was discovered shot to demise inside her automobile in Tijuana on Jan. 23. In a information convention in 2019, Maldonado Lopez advised Mexico's president she feared for her life.
Reporter José Luis Gamboa was killed within the Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Jan. 10.
Crime photographer Margarito Martínez was gunned down exterior his Tijuana dwelling on Jan. 17. Guillermo Arias, whose pictures chronicle life and demise within the streets of Tijuana, labored with Martinez for a few years.
He recalled the painful expertise of protecting the homicide of his buddy and fellow journalist.
"His daughter arrived and requested me to not photograph her dad's physique," Arias advised CBS Information.