As of yesterday, Mexico officially became the most dangerous country in the world for journalists this year after Gumaro Perez Mendoza’s fatal shooting.
This Tuesday morning, dozens gathered at an elementary school in Acayucan, Veracruz, Mexico to attend a children’s Christmas festival. The party had a Santa Claus theme, and they had cake, music, dancing, and piñatas.
Perez intended to stay with his son at the party while his wife left to work. Shortly after 11 AM, as Adelina Mendoza stepped outside to kiss her son goodbye, she heard gunshots. “I thought they were fireworks that some child had brought into the classroom,” she told reporters.
Before she knew it, a friend rushed over to tell her that her husband got shot. A pair of shooters stormed into the classroom looking for him, and let out several shots with 9-millimeter pistols before fleeing.
“God knows how to do things because my son never saw his father die,” the distraught widow said. She tried convincing Perez to leave his job to open up a restaurant with her, but he refused.
Perez covered news stories since he was a teenager – it was what he liked, and he wanted to continue his career as a journalist. Perez, 34, was known as “el hombre de rojo” or “the man in red” as he frequently wore the color.
His friends remember him as one of the best police reporters in town and say he was always rushing to record every single accident that took place. He was responsible for founding online news site, La Voz del Sur, and worked alongside local government in communications.
Perez’s death marks the 95th reporter to get murdered in Mexico since 1992. Out of those, 43 cases are directly related to the victim’s work, and far too many go unsolved.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Roberta Jacobson, said she is offended by Perez’s death at the hands of “cowardly killers.” “The truth cannot be killed by killing journalists,” she tweeted.
This article was inspired by WASHINGTON POST // ‘Cowardly killers’ walked into an elementary school Christmas party and fatally shot a Mexican journalist.