Acapulco reporter shot to death in busy central plaza

The Acapulco correspondent for Mexico's top television news network was shot to death after his radio show, the latest in a wave of journalist killings that have made Mexico the most dangerous country for reporters in the western hemisphere.

Televisa's Amado Ramirez was shot late on Friday by two gunmen who were waiting for him at his car, state security official Felipe Flores said. Ramirez died on the steps of the nearby Hotel California as he tried to escape. Televisa confirmed the death on their nightly broadcast.

The shooting happened on the outskirts of Acapulco's busy central plaza, which was packed at the time with tourists and hundreds of people attending a Good Friday Mass at the beach resort's cathedral. No one else was injured.

The gunmen escaped, and the motive for the killing was not immediately clear.

Ramirez covered Acapulco for Televisa for more than a dozen years, reporting on everything from crime to hurricanes.

Televisa Luis Raul Gonzalez condemned the fatal shooting on the network's nightly broadcast, and he called on police to find the killers. The network also aired the last report Ramirez did. The tourism segment showed the reporter interviewing tourists visiting Acapulco for Easter vacation.

Ramirez's program on Friday criticized Guerrero state Governor Zeferino Torreblanca for refusing to give his second state-of-the-state address in front of state lawmakers.

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), based in Miami, Florida, has reported an alarming number of journalists slain in Mexico on orders from drug gangs, with seven killed since October, two having disappeared and eight reporting death threats.

"Mexico has become the country [in the western hemisphere] where it's most dangerous to be a journalist," Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the IAPA's press freedom commission, said last month.