A former Mexican vigilante running for mayor was shot dead during a campaign event on Thursday in the troubled state of Michoacan, the third politician killed ahead of next month’s elections.
Enrique Hernandez was killed by gunfire coming from “a vehicle in movement” in the center of the town of Yurecuaro, where he was seeking higher office, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Three other people, including his wife, were wounded in the shooting in the town of 30,000 people.
Hernandez was a candidate for Morena, the new leftist party of two-time Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
He was also a former leader of vigilante groups formed by farmers in Michoacan in 2013 to combat the Knights Templar drug cartel, which had terrorized the state through murder, kidnappings and extortion.
Last year, Hernandez was detained in connection with the murder of the mayor of Tanhuato, but he was later released due to lack of evidence.
Morena’s candidate for governor, Maria de la Luz Nunez Ramos, said Hernandez’s killers were wearing masks.
“This act is deplorable and we demand that the authorities find those responsible,” she said.
The June 7 vote is the first electoral test of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration, almost halfway through his six-year term.
Security is a concern in Michoacan and the neighboring state of Guerrero.
Earlier this month, a mayoral candidate for Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, Ulises Fabian Quiroz, was murdered as he returned home from a rally in the Guerrero town of Chilapa.
In March, also in Guerrero, a woman candidate in the town of Ahuacuotzingo, Aide Nava, was kidnapped and later found dead. Her husband, the town’s former mayor, was killed months earlier.
Mexicans are to vote for 500 new members of the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress, as well as governors in nine of 32 states and nearly 900 mayors.
Michoacan Governor Salvador Jara Guerrero said Hernandez’s killing “marks the first flashpoint” of the election and that the security Cabinet would meet yesterday.
“We hope that this won’t have a bigger impact” on the elections, he told Milenio television.
Silvano Aureoles Conejo, the gubernatorial candidate for a coalition of the leftwing PRD, PT and PANAL parties, said: “We are jointly calling to build peace, tranquility, stability and harmony, and this stains the electoral process.”
“The authorities must act immediately,” he said. “The motives for this assault against the Morena candidate must be cleared up.”
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