Alleged hitmen shot dead Guillermo Torres Rojas, mayor of the municipality of Churumuco, in the state of Michoacán, western Mexico, on Saturday night, state authorities reported this Sunday.
In a statement, the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) indicated that the mayor was shot at around 10:30 p.m. local time on Saturday (05:00 GMT), by a pair of armed men who broke into the El Infierno restaurant, located in the west of the Historic Center of the city of Morelia, capital of Michoacán.
The hitmen fired at least four bullets into the mayor’s chest, although his 13-year-old son was also collaterally wounded by a gunshot.
Paramedics and police took Torres Rojas and his son to the private Star Médica hospital, in the south of Morelia, where the 39-year-old mayor lost his life.
After the attack, police and agents of the Mexican Army began operations in various parts of Morelia, in search of the murderers who managed to flee on a motorcycle.
Guillermo Torres won the mayoralty of Churumuco in the 2021 elections, championed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), although months later he resigned from that political institute to join the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), founded by the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Churumuco is a municipality located in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán, where there is a strong fight between criminal organizations calling themselves the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), the Churumuco Cartel, the Zicuarán Cartel and the Knights Templar.
On January 6, the Civil Guard (state police) deployed an operation in Churumuco, which caused citizen protests that, according to state authorities, were organized by one of the drug trafficking cartels.
During the protests, a Civil Guard agent was kidnapped by armed civilians, who murdered him and abandoned him on a highway in Churumuco. EFE
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