A Mexican journalist was fatally shot in northeastern Mexico on Wednesday as he was leaving his home, according to state prosecutors and his employer. He is the 12th journalist killed in Mexico this year.
Antonio de la Cruz, 47, a reporter for the Mexican newspaper Expreso, was leaving his house in Ciudad Victoria with his 23-year-old daughter when he was shot to death. His daughter also suffered serious injuries in the attack, NBC News reported.
Miguel Dominguez, the director of Expreso, said in an interview with Milenio Television that de la Cruz was “very aware of the reality of Tamaulipas, very brave.”
“He never expressed any concern to us,” Domínguez said.
The newspaper has been targeted by drug cartels for years. In 2012, a car bomb exploded outside Expreso’s building, and in 2018, a human head inside a cooler was left at their building. The cooler also included a warning not to report on city violence.
Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, the governor of Tamaulipas, vowed to investigate the killing so “this cowardly crime does not go unpunished.”
A special unit that investigates crimes against freedom of expression has been notified about the slaying, and the federal prosecutor’s office has also said it is opening an investigation.
In May, three journalists were killed in Mexico in one week, officials in the Mexican state of Veracruz revealed.
“The State Attorney General’s Office reports that an investigation folder was opened, due to the unfortunate events in which the director of the El Veraz portal, Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, and the reporter Sheila Johana García Olivera, in the municipality of Cosoleacaque, lost their lives,” Veracruz’s prosecutor’s office tweeted.
Veracruz governor Cuitláhuac García said at the time that an investigation was underway to find the killers.
“A coordinated search operation has already been activated for those responsible for the murder of a journalist in the municipality of Cosoleacaque. Let it be clear to those who do not want to understand it, in Veracruz there are no longer any complicities nor will any of these aggressions be tolerated,” he tweeted, according to a translation of the post.
“We will find the perpetrators of this crime, there will be justice and there will be no impunity as we have said and done in other cases. The @GobiernoVer is no longer ignored or complicit, we go after them. I appreciate the immediate support of Sria. of Federal Security, @rosaicela_.,” Garcia continued in a separate tweet.
