According to state prosecutors as well as the newspaper that employed him, a journalist was killed while leaving his home with his daughter, 23 years old, in northeastern Mexico.
Antonio de la Cruz (47) was a reporter at the Expreso newspaper for nearly three decades. He is the 12th journalist to be killed in this country.
De la Cruz was gunned down at his Ciudad Victoria home, capital of the state Tamaulipas near the U.S. border. Violence is a major problem in the region, which is also home to organized crime.
Expreso reports on all aspects of city news, including security concerns. De la Cruz covered social and rural topics, such as water scarcity.
He also covered Movimiento Ciudadano’s political party and its deputy, Gustavo Cardenas Gutierrez who condemned the murder.
Miguel Dominguez (director of the newspaper), said that De la Cruz was “very conscious of the reality in Tamaulipas, and very brave” during an interview with Milenio Television.
Dominguez stated that Dominguez never expressed concern for us.
Over the years, Expreso has been targeted. A car bomb was set off in front of the newspaper’s building in 2012, when drug cartel violence was at its worst. A cooler with a human head in it was left at the newspaper in 2018, along with a warning to not report on violence within the city.
Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca de Tamaulipas’ governor, had promised to investigate Wednesday’s killing so that “this cowardly crime doesn’t go unpunished.”
According to the state prosecutor’s office, the special unit that investigates crimes against freedom expression was informed. Federal prosecutor’s Office stated that it was opening an investigation.
Two colleagues from a news website were killed in Veracruz, a state on the Gulf coast. Veracruz State Prosecutor’s Office stated that it was investigating the deaths of Yessenia Mollinedo Fali and Sheila Johana Garcia Olivera. They were the director and reporter of El Veraz in Cosoleacaque.
Prosecutors in Michoacan’s western state reported that reporter Armando Linares was killed at Zitacuaro home. Six weeks later, Roberto Toledo was shot to death at a Zitacuaro home. Linares posted a video to social media on January 31st announcing Toledo’s death.
Juan Carlos Muniz was a reporter for Testigo Minero, an online news site that covers crime in Zacatecas. He was shot and killed by gunmen early March.
Jorge Camero was the director of an online news website and was a municipal worker in Sonora’s northern state until recently. He was shot to death in February.
Heber Lopez, the director of Noticias Web’s online news site, was killed in Oaxaca, the southern state.
Lourdes Maldonado, a reporter, was shot to death in her Tijuana car on January 23. Maldonado Lopez, a reporter from Mexico, said she feared for her own life at a news conference in 2019.
Jose Luis Gamboa, a reporter from Veracruz, was shot to death on January 10.
Margarito Martinez, a crime photographer, was shot to death outside Margarito’s Tijuana residence on Jan. 17. Guillermo Arias is a photographer whose photos chronicle death and life in Tijuana’s streets for many years.
He was still adamant about the difficult experience of reporting on the murder of his journalist friend.
Arias stated that her father’s daughter visited and asked me to not photograph his body.
