Mexican mayor Carlos Manzo who spoke against drug gangs assassinated. Who was he?
Manzo was assassinated during an event marking the Day of the Dead, some videos of which have surfaced online.
Mayor of Mexico's Uruapan city, Carlos Manzo, was shot dead during a public event on Saturday (local time), said authorities. The mayor was killed in an attack at the city center, said national public security agency in a statement, reported news agency AFP.
Uruapan is part of Mexico's western state of Michoacan, which has long been troubled by violence and organized crime, according to the report.
Two people were arrested in connection with the assassination and one of the suspects later died, said the public security agency.
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Who was Carlos Manzo?
Mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, was up against drug traffickers in the state of Michoacan, which is crippled with violence by drug cartels, and had made repeated pleas to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for more resources to tackle them, reported the New York Times.
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He was an open critic of Sheinbaum and her approach towards the organised crime in the country and had expressed that he felt threatened for his life lately. While he was a member of Sheinbaum's party Morena in the past, Manzo had ran as an independent in 2024 to become Uruapan's mayor and won.
As mayor, Manzo would occasionally put on a bulletproof vest and and join security patrols on the streets of his city, the AFP report said.
Manzo was assassinated during an event marking the Day of the Dead, some videos of which have surfaced online, purportedly showing people running to safety after gunshots were fired.
Right before the assassination, Manzo had shared a video from the event on his Facebook account. It was around 8 pm when he was shot and later succumbed to his injures at a hospital, the New York Times reported citing Michoacán state's attorney general Carlos Torres Piña. The motive behind the assassination is not yet known.
