Gunmen kill Mexican reporter despite his police protection
Gunmen in Mexico shot and killed a crime reporter in the central state of Guanajuato on Sunday.
Alejandro Martínez Noguez died in a hospital in the city of Celaya after being shot while in his car. He survived an attempt on his life in 2022, the BBC reported.
At the time he was shot, he was under the protection of two police officers, who ineffectively returned fire at the assailants.
Martínez went by the nickname “El Hijo del Llanero Solitito” — “The Son of the Lone Ranger.”
The journalist, who was in his 50s, ran a popular news outlet on Facebook with about 344,000 followers.
Hours before the attack,
Martínez covered a fatal car accident on a dangerous stretch of highway. He posted a 20-minute video about the incident.
Guanajuato, in central Mexico, has a population of 6,166,934. Celaya has a population of 310,413.
More than 150 media workers have been killed in Mexico since 1994, according to the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
“Mexican authorities must act immediately to find and arrest the killers of Alejandro Martínez Noguez, whose death underscores the dangers journalists face in the city of Celaya and its environs,” the Mexico representative of the Committee to Project Journalists, Jan-Albert Hootsen, said in a statement. “His shooting while under police protection is a shocking example of the dangers facing journalists trying to keep the Mexican public informed about what is happening in their country.”
Days earlier, Federico Hans, a journalist in Caborca in the northern state of Sonora, was wounded by gunfire as he got into his car outside his home.
On June 29, the journalist Víctor Culebro was found dead on a highway in the southern state of Chiapas.