The private secretary and an adviser to Mexico Metropolis’s mayor have been killed by gunmen on a motorbike in a central neighborhood of the capital Tuesday, authorities mentioned.
Mayor Clara Brugada holds the second strongest political put up within the nation to President Claudia Sheinbaum, and they’re allies within the Morena social gathering.
Brugada mentioned in a press release that her secretary Ximena Guzmán and adviser José Muñoz have been killed within the Moderna neighborhood. Brugada known as the killings a “direct assault.”
Authorities have been investigating the motive and checking surveillance digicam footage to determine the attackers, Brugada mentioned.
Forensic consultants have been seen gathering proof on the scene of the crime on a busy avenue, as law enforcement officials stood guard. A physique lined in a white sheet lay on the bottom close to the victims’ automotive, whose home windows have been shattered.
Cops stand guard close to the crime scene of the killing of Jose Munoz and Ximena Guzman in Mexico metropolis on Might 20, 2025.
VALENTINA ALPIDE/AFP through Getty Photographs
“There can be no impunity. These accountable can be arrested and should face justice,” Brugada mentioned in her assertion.
Sheinbaum lamented the killings and mentioned throughout her morning press briefing that there wouldn’t be impunity. Sheinbaum served as Mexico Metropolis’s mayor previous to profitable the presidency final 12 months.
“It is a deplorable incident,” Sheinbaum mentioned, pledging her full assist to Brugada and her crew.
In 2020, gunmen from the Jalisco New Technology Cartel tried to kill Sheinbaum’s then police chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, in a spectacular ambush on a central boulevard. He was wounded and three individuals have been killed.
Garcia Harfuch, who’s now Sheinbaum’s nationwide safety minister, mentioned his workplace was serving to seek for the perpetrators of Tuesday’s assault.
“We won’t let this cowardly act go unpunished,” he wrote on social media.
Claudia Sheinbaum (left), president of Mexico, and Clara Brugada (proper), mayor of Mexico Metropolis, attend the reopening of the modernization of the stations on Line 1 of the Cuauhtemoc-Chapultepec Metro Collective Transportation System in Mexico Metropolis, Mexico, on April 23, 2025.
Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs
Tuesday’s capturing unfolded simply hours after gunmen opened hearth and killed seven individuals, together with some minors, in Guanajuato, Mexico.
Whereas Mexican politicians and their aides, significantly on the native stage, typically get caught up in gang-related crime, such murders on the streets of the capital are comparatively uncommon.
However politicians are ceaselessly focused elsewhere in Mexico.
Simply final week, a mayoral candidate and three of her supporters have been shot lifeless at a marketing campaign occasion within the japanese Mexican state of Veracruz. That assault got here two days after Cecilia Ruvalcaba, a councilmember in Mexico’s western state of Jalisco, was gunned down in a hospital.
In April, Jose Luis Pereira, a senior member of the Teocaltiche metropolis authorities, was shot and killed whereas eating at a restaurant in Jalisco.
In December 2024, a Mexican congressman who was a member of the ruling coalition was shot lifeless in Veracruz.
About two months earlier than that, a mayor was murdered and decapitated within the southern state of Guerrero. A former prosecutor and native police official was later arrested in reference to the killing.
In June 2024, a mayor was killed in southern Mexico, lower than every week after one other politician was assassinated in the identical area.
That very same month, a neighborhood councilwoman was gunned down as she was leaving her residence in Guerrero. Her homicide got here just a few days after the mayor of a city in western Mexico and her bodyguard have been killed outdoors of a health club, simply hours after Sheinbaum was elected president.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.