By Deutsche Welle
Jun 18, 2024, 01:31 AM EDT
A mayor of the southern state of Guerrero, elected in the recent elections in Mexico, was murdered on Monday, June 17, on a highway in the tourist port of Acapulco, the state prosecutor’s office reported.
Salvador Villalva Flores, elected municipal president of Copala by the new regional party México Avanza, was killed on the Acapulco-Pinotepa Nacional highway, the Guerrero prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The National Guard took care of him
Municipal authorities of Copala reported that Villalva had protection from the National Guard due to threats from criminal groups and insecurity in the municipality.
The local newspaper Sur de Guerrero noted that Villalva was a retired captain of the Navy Secretariat and that the National Guard escorts did not accompany him on the trip he was making to Mexico City when he was murdered.
“The elected mayor was taken off the bus in which he was traveling when the unit stopped near San Pedro las Playas” in the early hours of Monday to shoot him dead, that media outlet noted on its website.
Investigation without arrests
Ministerial Police cordoned off the crime scene so that experts from the State Attorney General’s Office could carry out the corresponding investigations and collect evidence.
Outside the facilities of the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo), a National Guard van with about six police officers guarded the body.
The Attorney General’s Office of the State of Guerrero stated in a brief statement that it has already opened an investigation, but so far there have been no arrests.
On June 2, Mexico had the most violent political campaign and elections in its history, with 22 candidates murdered, recognized by the Government.
Several candidates murdered
Of the country’s 32 states, 17 suffered at least one politician’s murder, and the violence was mainly concentrated in Guerrero (south), with 12 deaths; Chiapas (southeast), with 11, and Michoacán (west), with 7 murdered.
In those elections, the leftist Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as the first president in the history of the Latin American country.
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